Iraqi PM Asks Protesters to Stay Home to Aid Fallujah Push
Iraq's prime minister appealed on Thursday to Iraqis to postpone the weekly protests due the following day so that security forces can focus on a key military operation aimed at retaking the city of Fallujah from the Islamic State group. For months, anti-government protesters, mainly followers of influential Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, have been holding […]Sinan Salaheddin writes for AP:
Iraq's prime minister appealed on Thursday to Iraqis to postpone the weekly protests due the following day so that security forces can focus on a key military operation aimed at retaking the city of Fallujah from the Islamic State group.
For months, anti-government protesters, mainly followers of influential Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, have been holding protests every Friday outside Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone and in other provinces, demanding reform to a political system widely seen as corrupt and ineffectual.
To protect the demonstrators from militant attacks, extra security forces are usually deployed around the Green Zone and other key areas, blocking major roads and paralyzing parts of the capital. In recent weeks, demonstrators knocked down the concrete blast walls surrounding the Green Zone and broke into Iraq's parliament building and government offices, plunging the country into a prolonged political crisis.
"All our security forces are preoccupied with liberating Fallujah and nearby areas, and imposing pressure on them in Baghdad and other provinces to protect the demonstrations will affect this issue (the Fallujah offensive)," Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi said during a visit to Fallujah Operation Command.
