AFP/Fallujah
Iraqi demonstrators hold national flags and placards behind a barbed wire during a protest against corruption, unemployment and poor public services, at Baghdad’s Tahrir Square. The placard in Arabic reads: Confessions under torture are void
Iraqi soldiers in Fallujah used electric batons and gunfire yesterday to break up a demonstration against government corruption and the lack of basic services, wounding 15 people, witnesses and a doctor said.
Police warned protesters to break up the demonstration shortly after it began. They then used electric batons and fired above the heads of the protesters to disperse them, witnesses said.
“Fifteen protesters were wounded (by the batons),” said Omar Delli, a doctor at the emergency ward at Fallujah hospital. By late afternoon, all had been discharged, he said.
The city, west of Baghdad, was placed under curfew for several hours after the trouble.
Protesters also turned out in small numbers in the northern city of Sulaimaniyah and the western city of Ramadi yesterday, but those demonstrations passed without incident.
The protests were the latest challenge to the government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki as a wave of popular uprisings sweeps across the Arab world. Iraq’s government has been shaken by a string of rallies across the country since the beginning of February, inspired by uprisings that forced out the presidents of Tunisia and Egypt.
Unlike protests in other parts of the Arab world, those in Iraq have not called for regime change, but for a more accountable government and better lives.