IRAQIS KEEP UP ANTI-REGIME DEMOS DESPITE PM’S VOW TO QUIT

Iraqis kept up their anti-government protests in Baghdad and across the south today, unsatisfied with the prime minister’s planned resignation and insisting “all corrupted people” must step down.

Prime Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi announced yesterday he was planning to submit his resignation to parliament but the following day, protests were still ongoing in his birthplace of Nasiriyah, in Iraq’s south.

Their renewed rallies came despite a bloody crackdown by security forces that left more than 40 protesters dead over the past two days in the city.

Three day mourning 

As the southern Iraqi city of Najaf and the Dhi Qar province continue the three days of official mourning over those killed in the past two days of protests, an Al Arabiya correspondent reported that demonstrators are closing several bridges in the city of Nasiriyah on Saturday.

He stated that demonstrators in Nasiriyah closed three major bridges on Saturday morning, adding that a number of demonstrators continued to stage a sit-in in front of the police headquarters of Dhi Qar, which witnessed violent clash with the security forces on Friday.

This comes after the Iraqi Human Rights Commission warned on Friday evening of a new massacre in the province of Dhi Qar, calling on protesters, tribal elders and clerics to intervene urgently to defuse the crisis.

The Commission called on security forces to exercise restraint and for demonstrators to keep to peaceful protesting.

Provincial governments of Najad and Dhi Qar had declared three days of mourning on Friday after a wave of violence in the two southern provinces.

Seventy protesters have been killed and hundreds more wounded in the cities of Najaf and Nasiriyah, the capital of Dhi Qar, since Thursday due to clashes with security forces in the bloodiest incident of popular protests that began in early October.

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