Two car bombs claimed by the Islamic State group killed at least 14 people and wounded 37 others in the center of the southern Iraqi city of Samawa yesterday, police said, while on Saturday, protesters tore down walls and poured into the Iraqi capital’s heavily fortified Green Zone, where they stormed parliament.
The first blast was near a local government building and the second one about 60m away at a bus station, police sources said.
Unverified online photographs showed a large plume of smoke rising above the buildings as well as burned-out cars and bodies on the ground, including several children, at the site of one of the blasts. Police officers and firefighters carried people away on stretchers and in their arms.
Photo: Reuters
Saturday was the first time supporters of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr broke into the Green Zone, home to most government ministries and foreign embassies. The group have been holding demonstrations and sit-ins for months to demand an overhaul of Iraq’s political system.
Iraqi security forces fired tear gas at one entrance of the zone, but appeared to be largely standing down as protesters marched through the area, chanting and waving Iraqi flags.
Iraq has been mired in a political crisis for months, hindering the government’s ability to combat the Islamic State group — which still controls much of the country’s north and west — or address a financial crisis largely caused by a plunge in global oil prices.
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