BAGHDAD, (Reuters) – One of Iraq’s most influential clerics called yesterday for the government to resign as the death toll rose to 65 in three days of violent national protests against official corruption.
Moqtada al-Sadr, a populist political leader who has a huge following on the Iraqi street, said new elections should be held soon.
“Respect the blood of Iraq through the resignation of the government and prepare for early elections overseen by international monitors,” a statement from his office said.
Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi called for calm as more than 190 people were wounded in the capital yesterday, but protesters scorned his promises of political reform.
Sadr’s intervention appeared likely to encourage them to continue their uprising until the government backs down.
On the streets of Baghdad, police appeared to be targeting individual protesters. Reuters reporters saw one fall to the ground after being shot in the head. He was pronounced dead in hospital.
Elsewhere, a Reuters television crew saw a man critically wounded by a gunshot to the neck after snipers on rooftops opened fire at a crowd. Sporadic shooting could be heard in Baghdad into the late evening.
Police shot dead three people trying to storm the provincial government headquarters in the southern city of Diwaniya, police and medics said.
The violence is the worst since Iraq put down an insurgency by Islamic State two years ago. The protests arose in the south, heartland of the Shi’ite majority, but quickly spread, with no formal leadership.
Security and medical sources gave a death toll on Friday of 65 killed and 192 wounded across Iraq in three days, the vast majority of the deaths in the last 24 hours as the violence accelerated.
“It is sorrowful that there have been so many deaths, casualties and destruction,” Iraq’s most influential cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, said in a letter read out by his representative during a sermon.
“The government and political sides have not answered the demands of the people to fight corruption or achieved anything on the ground,” said Sistani, who stays out of day-to-day politics but whose word is law for Iraq’s Shi’ites. “Parliament holds the biggest responsibility for what is happening.”
Sadr, who leads the largest opposition bloc in parliament, ordered his lawmakers to suspend participation in the legislature until the government introduces a programme that would serve all Iraqis.
The speaker of Iraq’s parliament called the protests a “revolution” against corruption but urged calm and proposed reforms such as better state housing support for poor people and ensuring Iraqi graduates are included on lucrative foreign projects for energy sector development.
Many government officials and lawmakers are widely accused of siphoning off public money, unfairly awarding contracts in state institutions and other forms of corruption.
