Region

NASIRIYAH, Iraq — Iraqis kept up anti-government protests in Baghdad and the south on Saturday, dissatisfied with the premier's vow to quit and insisting on the overhaul of a system they say is corrupt and under the sway of foreign powers.

Protesters have hit the streets since early October in the largest grassroots movement Iraq has seen in decades, sparked by fury at poor public services, lack of jobs and widespread government graft.

Security forces and armed groups responded with violence to the decentralised demonstrations, killing more than 420 people and wounding 15,000, according to an AFP tally compiled from medics and an Iraqi rights commission.

The toll spiked dramatically last week, when a crackdown by security forces left dozens dead in Baghdad, the Shiite shrine city of Najaf and the southern hotspot of Nasiriyah — the birthplace of Prime Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi.

Facing pressure from the street and the country's top Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, Abdel Mahdi announced on Friday that he would submit his resignation to parliament, due to meet Sunday.

But demonstrations have not subsided, with crowds in the capital and across the Shiite-majority south sticking to their weeks-long demands for complete regime change.

“We’ll keep up this movement,” said one protester in the southern city of Diwaniyah, where thousands turned out early on Saturday.

“Abdel Mahdi’s resignation is only the first step, and now all corrupt figures must be removed and judged.”

Wounded in capital, south 

Teenaged protesters threw rocks at security forces in Baghdad, who were positioned behind concrete barriers to protect government buildings. 

The forces fired rubber bullets and tear gas canisters at the demonstrators, wounding 10, a medical source told AFP.

“We won’t leave our barricades until the regime falls, until we get jobs, water, electricity,” one protester said.

More than two dozen protesters were wounded in Nasiriyah when security forces fired live ammunition at anti-government rallies, medics said.

The units dispersed a sit-in on one bridge in the city but protesters held two more, according to AFP’s correspondent.

Iraq’s second holy city Karbala was rocked by overnight clashes between young protesters and security forces exchanging fire bombs.

Najaf was relatively calm on Saturday, according to AFP’s correspondent, but protests there usually swell later in the day. 

This week’s surge in violence started when protesters stormed and burned the Iranian consulate in Najaf late on Wednesday, accusing Iraq’s neighbour of propping up the Baghdad government.

Tehran demanded Iraq take decisive action against the protesters and hours later Abdel Mahdi ordered military chiefs to “impose security and restore order”.

Over two days, 42 people were shot dead in Nasiriyah, 22 in Najaf and three in Baghdad.

The rising death toll sparked a dramatic intervention from Sistani, the 89-year-old spiritual leader of many of Iraq’s Shiites.

In his Friday sermon, Sistani urged parliament to stop supporting the government, and hours later, Abdel Mahdi announced he would submit his resignation.

Fears of ‘civil war’  

Iraq’s Supreme Judicial Council on Saturday said it had formed a committee to probe the unrest, pledging to “punish those who attacked protesters”. 

Accountability for those killed has become a key demand of protesters in Iraq, where tribal traditions — including revenge for murder — remain widespread.

“Every victim has a mother, a father, a tribe who won’t stay quiet,” said a Baghdad protester.

“Otherwise there could be civil war.” 

Even cities that have been relatively peaceful, including Hilla, held mourning marches for those killed in recent days. 

Within minutes of Abdel Mahdi’s Friday announcement, leading factions called for a no-confidence vote — including key government backer the Saeroon parliamentary bloc, led by firebrand cleric Moqtada Sadr. 

Abdel Mahdi’s other main backer, the Fatah bloc, called for “necessary changes in the interests of Iraq” in a departure from its usual statements supporting him.

Since promising to submit his resignation, Abdel Mahdi has continued to hold meetings, including with Cabinet and the United Nation’s top representative on Saturday.

Iraq’s constitution does not include a provision for the resignation of a premier, so submitting a letter to parliament would trigger a motion of no-confidence. 

If parliament meets on Sunday and passes such a motion, the cabinet would stay on in a caretaker role until the president names a new premier.

Chief Justice Faeq Zeidan is one of several names being circulated as a possible replacement.

TEHRAN — Air pollution forced the closure of schools and universities in parts of Iran on Saturday, including Tehran, which was cloaked by a cloud of toxic smog, state media reported.

The decision to shut schools and universities in the capital was announced late Friday by deputy governor Mohammad Taghizadeh, after a meeting of an emergency committee for air pollution.

"Due to increased air pollution, kindergartens, preschools and schools, universities and higher education institutes of Tehran province will be closed," he said, quoted by state news agency IRNA.

An odd-even traffic scheme was imposed to restrict the number of private vehicles on roads of the capital city and trucks were banned outright in Tehran province, IRNA reported.

The young and elderly and people with respiratory illnesses were warned to stay indoors and sporting activities were suspended on Saturday, the start of the working week in the Islamic republic.

Schools were also closed on Saturday in the northern province of Alborz and in the central province of Esfahan, IRNA reported, citing officials.

Other areas where schools were shut included the northeastern city of Mashhad, Orumiyeh city in northwestern Iran and Qom, south of Tehran.

In Tehran, average concentrations of hazardous airborne particles reached 146 microgrammes per cubic metre on Saturday, according to air.tehran.ir, a government-linked website.

The pall of pollution has shrouded the sprawling city of eight million for days and is only expected to dissipate on Monday when rain is forecast.

Air pollution was the cause of nearly 30,000 deaths per year in Iranian cities, state media reported earlier this year, citing a health ministry official.

The problem worsens in Tehran during winter, when a lack of wind and the cold air traps hazardous smog over the city for days on end — a phenomenon known as thermal inversion.

Most of the city’s pollution is caused by heavy duty vehicles, motorbikes, refineries and power plants, according to a World Bank report released last year.

BETHLEHEM, Palestinian Territories — A wooden fragment believed to be from the manger of Jesus arrived in his birthplace of Bethlehem on Saturday amid great ceremony after more than 1,300 years in Europe.

A Palestinian scout band playing bagpipes, drums and saxophones accompanied the relic as it arrived in Manger Square, an AFP reporter said.

Housed in Rome since the seventh century, the relic had been presented to the Franciscan custodians of the Holy Land as a gift from the Vatican.

Worshippers thronged the square as the chief custodian for the Holy Land, Francesco Patton, carried the ornate reliquary housing the relic into the Saint Catherine Church next to the Church of the Nativity, where he led mass.

On Friday Patton told AFP that the seventh-century Latin Patriarch of Jerusalem, Sophronius, had sent the relic to Rome in around 640 as a gift to Pope Theodore I.

Now the item, about a centimetre wide by 2.5 centimetres long, is to be installed "forever" in Bethlehem, he said.

"We venerate the relic because [it] reminds us of the mystery of incarnation, to the fact that the son of God was born of Mary in Bethlehem more than 2,000 years ago," Patton said.

Bethlehem has planned celebrations stretching until Christmas for the homecoming.

Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas had asked Pope Francis to repatriate the crib fragment during his visit to the Vatican for Middle East peace talks in December 2018, said Palestinian envoy to the Holy See, Issa Kassissieh.

NASIRIYAH, BAGHDAD, Iraq — Iraq's southern hotspot of Nasiriyah was in bloody upheaval Thursday after a government crackdown killed 25 protesters and thousands defied a curfew to march in their funerals, following the dramatic torching of an Iranian consulate.

Meanwhile, six people were killed in near-simultaneous blasts across Iraq's capital late Tuesday, medics and a security source said.There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the three explosions, which were the first such violence in the capital after months of relative calm. 

The blasts were caused by two explosives-laden motorcycles and a roadside bomb and hit three Shiite neighbourhoods of Baghdad, according to medical and security sources. 

Around a dozen people were wounded and taken to Baghdad hospitals already treating scores of demonstrators hurt earlier in the day in protests.

Iraq’s capital and south have been torn by the worst street unrest since the 2003 US-led invasion that toppled Saddam Hussein, as a protest movement has vented their fury at their government and its backers in neighbouring Iran.

Late Wednesday, protesters outraged at Tehran’s political influence in Iraq burned down the Iranian consulate in the shrine city of Najaf, yelling “Victory to Iraq!” and “Iran out!”

In response, Prime Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi early on Thursday ordered military chiefs to deploy in several restive provinces to “impose security and restore order”, the army said.

But by the afternoon, after the protesters’ deaths, the premier had already removed one of the commanders, General Jamil Shummary.

Shummary had been dispatched to the premier’s birthplace of Nasiriyah, a southern city that has been a protest hotspot for weeks.

The ensuing crackdown was particularly bloody, with at least 25 protesters killed and more than 200 wounded as security forces cleared sit-ins with live fire, medics and security sources said.

The provincial governor in Nasiriyah, Adel Al Dakhili, blamed the crackdown on Shummary, who was the military commander of the southern port city of Basra when demonstrations there were brutally suppressed in 2018.

Dakhili demanded the premier sack him, and hours later, state television announced Abdel Mahdi had ordered Shummary removed from the post.

Tribes deploy 

The latest violence brought the death toll since early October to over 370, with more than 15,000 wounded according to an AFP tally, as authorities are not releasing updated or precise figures. 

Thousands of Nasiriyah’s residents took to the streets to mourn the city’s dead in funeral processions, defying a curfew announced there earlier in the day.

“We’re staying until the regime falls and our demand are met!” they chanted. 

Demonstrators who had been dispersed by security forces regrouped at Nasiriyah’s police station, setting it on fire.

They then encircled its main military headquarters as armed members of the area’s influential tribes deployed along main highways to blockade military reinforcements trying to reach the city. 

Events in southern Iraq have unfolded dramatically since late Wednesday, when protesters stormed the Iranian consulate in the Shiite holy city of Najaf. 

They set tyres and other items ablaze around the consulate, sending tall flames and thick clouds of smoke into the night sky, an AFP correspondent witnessed.

They also broke into the building itself, which had been apparently evacuated by its Iranian staff.

Demonstrators across Iraq have blamed powerful eastern neighbour Iran for propping up the Baghdad government which they are seeking to topple.

Tehran demanded Iraq take decisive action against the protesters, with Foreign Ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi condemning the attack.

“Iran has officially communicated its disgust to the Iraq ambassador in Tehran,” he said in comments carried by Iran’s state news agency IRNA.

 Karbala clashes 

Iran’s consulate in Iraq’s other holy city of Karbala was targeted earlier this month, and security forces defending the site shot four demonstrators dead at the time.

Iran and Iraq have close but complicated ties. 

The two countries fought a devastating 1980-1988 war, but Iran now has significant sway among Iraqi political and military leaders.

Top Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani, Tehran’s pointman on Iraq, has held several meetings in Baghdad and Najaf to convince political factions to close rank around the government of Abdel Mahdi.

Those meetings previously paved the way for a brief crackdown in Baghdad and the south late last month but the protest movement proved resilient.

Sit-ins, road closures and street marches have kept public offices and schools shut across many of Iraq’s southern cities for weeks. 

On Thursday, clashes broke out near the provincial headquarters of Karbala between some 200 protesters and riot police using tear gas and flash bangs. 

Protesters kept up their sit-ins in Kut, Amara and Hilla, all south of the capital, despite a notably larger security presence. 

In the oil-rich port city of Basra, most government offices reopened but schools remained closed as security forces deployed in the streets. 

Iraq is OPEC’s second-largest crude producer and the oil exported through Basra’s offshore terminals funds more than 90 per cent of the government’s budget.

Protesters have accused the ruling elite of embezzling for personal gain state funds that are desperately needed to restore failing public services and fix schools.

Corruption is rampant in Iraq, ranked the world’s 12th most graft-ridden country by Transparency International.

One in five Iraqis lives in poverty and youth unemployment stands at 25 per cent, according to the World Bank.

TEHRAN — Iran said Thursday European parties to the 2015 nuclear deal such as France could not trigger a dispute mechanism in the agreement that could lead to UN sanctions being reimposed.

French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian raised the possibility Wednesday of invoking the mechanism, but Iran's foreign ministry said this would not be permissible.

The deal "does not allow the European parties to invoke the mechanism as Iran is exercising its legal right in response to the United States' illegal and unilateral actions", ministry spokesman Abbas Mousavi said, quoted by semi-official news agency ISNA.

The nuclear deal — known formally as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JCPOA — has been unravelling since May 2018 when the United States unilaterally withdrew from it and began reimposing sanctions on Iran.

The three European countries still party to the deal — Britain, France and Germany — have been trying to salvage it.

But their efforts have borne little fruit, and one year after the US pullout Iran began retaliating with a series of steps to row back its commitments to the accord.

On Wednesday, Le Drian said that "every two months there is another notch [from Iran] to the extent that we are wondering today... about the implementation of the dispute resolution mechanism in the treaty".

"Given the succession of actions taken by the Iranian authorities, who are progressively at odds with the contents of the JCPOA, the question comes up," he added.

Mousavi hit out at what he called the "irresponsible and unconstructive" remarks.

"It extremely discredits the effectiveness of political initiatives for the whole implementation of the JCPOA by all sides in line with the system of lifting sanctions," he said.

“The logic and the purpose of the mechanism for resolving anticipated issues in the JCPOA is to consider compensatory measures for both sides.

“Therefore... the JCPOA doesn’t allow the European parties to invoke the mechanism against the Islamic Republic of Iran’s legal right in response to the United States’ illegal and unilateral actions,” he added.

The JCPOA set out the terms under which Iran would restrict its nuclear programme to civilian use in exchange for the lifting of western sanctions.

Since the US pullout, Iran has taken four steps back from the accord.

The latest was on November 4 when its engineers began feeding uranium hexafluoride gas into mothballed enrichment centrifuges at the underground Fordow plant south of Tehran.

Soon afterwards, Britain, France, Germany and the European Union said Iran’s decision to resume activities at Fordow was “inconsistent” with the nuclear deal.

Germany warned earlier this month that the dispute resolution mechanism in the agreement could be triggered if Iran continued down this path.

It covers various stages that could take several months to unfold, but the issue could eventually end up before the UN Security Council, which could decide to reimpose sanctions.

The five-nation commission overseeing the Iran nuclear deal is set to meet in Vienna on December 6, with fears growing that it could collapse.

The Joint Commission is made up of the three European nations and the deal’s other remaining parties, China and Russia.