BAGHDAD: Iraqi security forces shot dead at least 28 protesters on Thursday after demonstrators stormed and torched an Iranian consulate overnight, in what could mark a turning point in the uprising against the authorities.
At least 24 people died when troops opened fire on demonstrators who blocked a bridge in the southern city of Nassiriya before dawn on Thursday. Medical sources said dozens of others were wounded.
Four others were killed in the capital Baghdad, where security forces opened fire with live ammunition and rubber bullets against protesters near a bridge over the Tigris river.
The incidents marked one of the bloodiest days since the uprising began at the start of October, with anti-corruption demonstrations swelling by now into a revolt against authorities described by many demonstrators as “stooges of Tehran”.
In Najaf, a city of pilgrimage sites that serves as seat of Iraq’s powerful Shia clergy, the Iranian consulate was reduced to a charred ruin after it was stormed overnight. Protesters accused the Iraqi authorities of turning against their own people to defend Iran.
“All the riot police in Najaf and the security forces started shooting at us as if we were burning Iraq as a whole,” a protester who witnessed the burning of the consulate said.
So far, the authorities have been unyielding in response to the unrest, shooting dead hundreds of demonstrators with live ammunition and tear gas, while floating proposals for political reform that the protesters dismiss as trivial and cosmetic.
Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi has so far rejected calls to resign, after meetings with senior politicians that were attended by the commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force.
In a statement that suggested more violence was to come, the military commander of the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), an umbrella group of paramilitary groups whose most powerful factions are close to Iran, suggested the overnight unrest in Najaf was a threat to Shia clergy based in the city.
The paramilitary fighters would use full force against anyone who threatened Iraq’s most senior Shia cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis said in a statement posted on the PMF website. “We will cut the hand of anyone trying to get near al-Sistani,” he said.
Ayatollah Sistani himself has appeared to back the protesters since the unrest erupted, calling on politicians to meet the popular demands for reform.
Authorities set up “crisis cells” in several provinces to try to restore order, a military statement said on Thursday.
