UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Friday condemned the “gross violations” by human rights forces in Iraq, saying “according to our first conclusions, there are certain to be major human rights violations that must be clearly condemned” without further details.
The death toll among protesters rose to 30 on Friday in Iraq, including eight in Baghdad, the Iraqi Human Rights Commission said in a statement.
Half of them were shot dead in the south of the country, where demonstrators tried to storm a headquarters of “Asaib Ahl al-Haq,” one of the most prominent factions of the Popular Mobilization Forces.
Among the dead were three in the southern oil city of Basra, which saw a similar week of violence last year.
Demonstrators set fire to the buildings of the provinces of Dhi Qar and Diwaniya, and burned more than a dozen headquarters of political parties in the south of the country, according to security sources.
Security forces repelled a barrage of tear gas on Friday by thousands of demonstrators gathered in central Baghdad.
All security forces have been on alert since Thursday evening by Adel Abdel Mahdi’s government, which on Friday completed its first year in office.
This prompted demonstrators to return to the symbolic Tahrir Square, which is separated from the Green Zone by the Republic Bridge.
This came after the representative of Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the highest Shiite authority in Iraq, called in Friday sermon for “restraint” to avoid “chaos.”
He added that the religious authority’s emphasis on the need for peaceful protests to be free from violence stems from its “keenness on the future of this country” and “fears with it that the violence and the corresponding violence will descend into chaos and devastation. Between some international and regional powers. “
The security forces dispersed with water cannons on Friday night demonstrators at the entrance to the Green Zone.
The cheers of the demonstrators were unified, “all thieves,” calling for the overthrow of the government, in an oil-rich country but suffering from chronic power shortages and drinking water.
The dispersal came hours before the planned mobilization of supporters of Shiite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, who put all his weight in the balance of the protest movement.
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