SULAIMANI (ESTA) — Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi dismissed Dhi Qar police chief after four people were killed in clashes with followers of Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr in Nasiriyah city on Friday (November 27).
The cleric’s supporters carrying pictures of the cleric marched to the central al-Haboubi square, where anti-government protesters have held a sit-in since 2019, after Friday prayers.
They fired gunshots and threw petrol bombs at the protesters’ tents, leading the protesters to fight back, Reuters cited a witness as saying.
Medical sources said the violence had left four people dead and wounded nearly 51 others, nine of them by gunfire, AFP reported.
Yehia Rasool, spokesman for Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, said Kadhimi had ordered to dismiss the police chief of Dhi Qar and to form a committee to investigate clashes between protesters and the cleric’s followers.
Kadhimi also ordered to declare a curfew in the province, Rasool said in a tweet late on Friday.
The premier stressed that “tension in Iraq is not in the interest of the country, and that there is no substitute for law, order and justice,” Rasool cited Kadhimi as saying.
Haboubi square, where one of the worst killings of demonstrators took place last year and the last major protest site, had been cleared on Friday night by Sadr supporters, a witness told Reuters, another major blow to anti-government protests that have largely lost steam in recent months.
In a tweet this week, Sadr said he expected major wins in the new elections and would push for the next prime minister to be a member of his movement for the first time.
He also called for a protest on Friday, prompting tens of thousands to turn out in Baghdad, and in other Iraqi cities including Al-Hillah and Basra in the south.
Iraq is facing its most dire fiscal crisis in decades following a collapse in oil prices earlier this year and the economic impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic, with the government unable to pay public sector salaries on time.
