Iraq’s military yesterday admitted for the first time it had used “excessive force” in nearly a week of deadly protests, as paramilitary units said they were ready to back the government.
More than 100 people have been killed and several thousand wounded in demonstrations increasingly spiraling into violence, with witnesses reporting security forces using water cannons, tear gas and live rounds.
A mass protest on Sunday evening in Sadr City in east Baghdad led to clashes that medics and security forces said left 13 people dead.
Photo: AP
In videos distributed on social media, protesters could be seen ducking into streets littered with burning tires as a volley of gunfire and suspected heavy weapons were heard.
“Excessive force outside the rules of engagement was used and we have begun to hold accountable those commanding officers who carried out these wrong acts,” the military said.
It said Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi had ordered those forces to be replaced with federal police units and the intelligence services to open an investigation into the incident.
It was the first time since protests broke out that security forces acknowledged using disproportionate measures, after the prime minister insisted they had been acting “within international standards” in dealing with demonstrations.
Across Baghdad yesterday as in several southern cities, streets were reopening and no protests could be seen, although demonstrators typically gather in the late evening.
Sadr City, a densely populated, impoverished part of the capital, is a bastion of famed firebrand cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who has thrown his weight behind the protests by calling on Abdel Mahdi’s government to resign.
However, the prime minister instead announced a series of reforms to create jobs, boost social welfare and oust corrupt officials.
Abdel Mahdi has accused “saboteurs” of infiltrating the protests, a claim echoed by the Hashed al-Shaabi, a powerful network of mostly-Shiite, pro-Iran paramilitary units.
“We know who stands behind these protests. The plan to bring down the regime has failed,” its leader Faleh al-Fayyadh told journalists in Baghdad.
He said his forces would support actions against corrupt institutions, but not “the fall of the regime,” a chant which has featured more prominently in the protests in recent days.
“Those who wanted to defame Iraq will be punished,” Fayyadh said, adding that his forces were “ready for any government order.”
His words echoed a statement earlier yesterday by Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who accused “enemies” of trying to drive a wedge between Tehran and Baghdad.
“Enemies seek to sow discord but they’ve failed & their conspiracy won’t be effective,” Khamenei was quoted as saying on his office’s Twitter account.
However, Iran has urged its citizens planning to take part in a major Shiite pilgrimage in Iraq to delay their travel into the country over the violence.
Abdel Mahdi also said yesterday that he discussed the recent events and reform plans in a telephone call with US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, without providing further details.
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
Le Tuan Binh keeps his Moroccan soldier father’s tombstone at his village home north of Hanoi, a treasured reminder of a man whose community in Vietnam has been largely forgotten. Mzid Ben Ali, or “Mohammed” as Binh calls him, was one of tens of thousands of North Africans who served in the French army as it battled to maintain its colonial rule of Indochina. He fought for France against the Viet Minh independence movement in the 1950s, before leaving the military — as either a defector or a captive — and making a life for himself in Vietnam. “It’s very emotional for me,”
UNDER INVESTIGATION: Members of the local Muslim community had raised concerns with the police about the boy, who officials said might have been radicalized online A 16-year-old boy armed with a knife was shot dead by police after he stabbed a man in the Australian west coast city of Perth, officials said yesterday. The incident occurred in the parking lot of a hardware store in suburban Willetton on Saturday night. The teen attacked the man and then rushed at police officers before he was shot, Western Australian Premier Roger Cook told reporters. “There are indications he had been radicalized online,” Cook told a news conference, adding that it appeared he acted alone. A man in his 30s was found at the scene with a stab wound to his back.