Two protesters were shot dead overnight in Iraq’s south, where resurging anti-government sit-ins yesterday turned up the heat on paralyzed politicians facing the country’s largest grassroots movement in decades.
Since Oct. 1, Iraq’s capital and majority-Shiite south have been swept by mass demonstrations over corruption, lack of jobs and poor services that have escalated into calls for an overhaul of the ruling system.
Top leaders have publicly acknowledged the demands as legitimate and promised measures to appease protesters, including hiring drives, electoral reform and a Cabinet reshuffle.
However, the rallies have continued, waning on some days, but swelling when demonstrators felt politicians were stalling.
Protesters in the southern city of Nasiriyah yesterday blockaded five main bridges, shut down schools and burned tires outside public offices in anger.
They blocked access to oil fields and companies around the city, torching as well its Shiite endowment center, a government body that manages religious sites.
Overnight, two protesters had been shot dead and at least 47 others wounded by security forces in the city.
Clashes also pitted protesters against security forces overnight in Karbalah, one of Iraq’s two Shiite holy cities. The two sides lobbed Molotov cocktails at each other from behind barricades set up in small alleyways.
“They’re throwing Molotov cocktails at us and at midnight, they started shooting live rounds,” one demonstrator said.
The streets were lit only by fires from the exploding makeshift grenades and green laser pointers used by demonstrators to disrupt the riot police’s vision.
“Our demands are clear: The downfall of this corrupt government,” said another demonstrator, his face wrapped in a black scarf.
Yesterday’s violence came a day after the surprise visit of US Vice President Mike Pence to Iraq, where he dropped in on US troops stationed in western Iraq and met top leaders in the Kurdish region.
Pence’s visit was the highest-level US trip since President Donald Trump ordered a pullback of US forces in Syria two months ago.
Flying in a C-17 military cargo aircraft, Pence, joined on the trip by his wife, Karen Pence, landed in Erbil, capital of Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdish region, to meet with Iraqi Kurdistan President Nechirvan Barzani.
Asked by reporters if the US was facing a sense of betrayal from Iraqi and Syrian Kurdish allies over Trump’s actions in Syria, Pence said both groups, including Syrian Kurdish forces “who fought alongside us,” had no doubts about the US commitment to them.
“It’s unchanging,” Pence said.
Pence received a classified briefing at Iraq’s Al-Asad Air Base and spoke by telephone with Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul-Mahdi after the Iraqi leader declined an invitation to meet with him at the air base when security concerns prevented Pence from traveling into Baghdad.
Pence and his wife greeted US troops ahead of the Thanksgiving holiday on Thursday, serving turkey to hundreds of troops at the two locations.
“While you come from the rest of us, you’re the best of us,” Pence told service members in a dusty hangar at Al-Asad.
He said the Trump administration is working to secure another pay increase for the armed services and suggested the ongoing impeachment inquiry in Washington was slowing the way.
Pence’s trip was his second to the region in five weeks.
Trump deployed him on a whirlwind journey to Ankara last month to negotiate a ceasefire after Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan seized on the US withdrawal to launch the offensive on US-allied Kurdish fighters in northern Syria.
Underscoring Pence’s message that US military partnership with Syrian Kurdish forces is ongoing, the US-led coalition on Saturday said that its forces, along with hundreds of Syrian Kurdish commandos, had jointly carried out the largest operation against the Islamic State in eastern Syria since the US pullback began early last month.
Friday’s operation in Deir el-Zour Province captured dozens of Islamic State militants and seized weapons and explosives, the coalition said.
Additional reporting by AP
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