The protest continued in Iraq on Wednesday (October 2nd). Thousands of Iraqis marched for the second day in a row. At least nine people have been killed and hundreds wounded since Tuesday.

Eight protesters and one policeman were shot dead Tuesday and Wednesday in Baghdad and Nasiriyah town in the south, officials said, who did not say where the shots came from.

The government responded to protesters protesting against the corruption of power, unemployment and decaying public services, by imposing a curfew on three cities in the south of the country: Nassiriya, Amara and Hilla.

Anti-terrorist units were also deployed at Baghdad airport where they fired live ammunition at protesters, preventing them from storming it.

The country has also been deprived of the Internet, including the capital Baghdad, said the NGO NetBlocks, which lists the Internet cuts. Social networks such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram no longer worked on Wednesday, except in Iraqi Kurdistan, which has its own Internet infrastructure.

On Wednesday, anti-riot forces deployed in these areas and in the holy Shiite city of Najaf, south of Baghdad, again fired live ammunition to disperse thousands of demonstrators, according to AFP journalists there.

Closing the green zone

Demonstrators and police were mainly facing the edge of the iconic Tahrir Square in Baghdad, a traditional meeting place for demonstrators separated from the ultra-sensitive Green Zone by the al-Joumhouriya bridge cordoned off by the police.

Because of the presence of the demonstrators, the Iraqi authorities decided Wednesday to close the Green Zone in Baghdad, where sit the highest institutions of the country and the US embassy, ​​told AFP a government source.

Military vehicles and members of the security forces have been deployed in front of entrances and roads leading to the Green Zone, the source said.

Demonstrations against power are not uncommon in Iraq, but since the arrival of Abdel Mahdi's government on October 25, 2018, no such spontaneous gathering has been so widespread.

The mobilization brings together all kinds of disappointed government, unemployed graduates to critics of corruption. No organization, political or religious, declared itself the origin of calls to protest online.

With AFP