Casualties mount as Iraq protesters block highways to press reforms

BAGHDAD: Security forces fired live rounds in Baghdad and southern Iraq on Wednesday amid ongoing violence and days of sit-ins.

Protesters blocked roads with burning tires and clashed with police, aiming to use economic disruption as leverage to push the government from power and root out state corruption.

Security forces shot dead four people in Karbala overnight and two in Baghdad on Wednesday, while one person died from gunfire by security forces during protests in the southern oil capital of Basra.

Demonstrators prevented government employees getting to work in Basra by installing concrete barriers painted as mock-up coffins of relatives killed in weeks of unrest. Government reform has amounted to little more than a handful of state jobs for graduates, stipends for the poor and pledges of election reform which lawmakers have barely begun to discuss.

“First we were demanding reform and an end to corruption,” said Ali Nasser, an unemployed engineering graduate protesting in Basra.

“But after the government started killing peaceful protesters we won’t leave before it’s been toppled together with the corrupt ruling class.”

Alia, a 23-year-old medical student, said: “The reforms are just words. We want actions. We’ve had 16 years of words without actions. We have been robbed for 16 years.”

Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi expressed concern over both the violence and the financial toll of unrest, but mostly blamed unidentified saboteurs for the damage.

“There have been martyrs among protesters and security forces, many wounded and arrested ... we’re trying to identify mistakes” made by security forces in trying to put down the protests, he told a televised Cabinet meeting.

“The blocking of ports has cost billions of dollars.”

Protesters are occupying three key bridges in central Baghdad — Jumhuriya, Ahrar and Sinar — in a standoff with security forces. On Wednesday, they also burned tires on Ahrar Bridge to block security forces from accessing the area.

Roads between Karbala and Baghdad were blocked by protesters on Wednesday. Demonstrators have burned tires and cut access to main roads in several southern provinces in recent days.

In Basra, protesters continued to cut major roads to the main Gulf commodities ports in Umm Qasr and Khor Al-Zubair, reducing trade activity by 50 percent.

Protesters also blocked roads leading to major oil fields in West Qurna and Rumaila. An Oil Ministry official said crude production was not impacted by the closures.