Daily Times

BAGHDAD: Thousands of supporters of Iraqi cleric Moqtada al-Sadr on Friday attempted to break into Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone again, three weeks after storming parliament.

A huge deployment of security forces met the protesters with tear gas, sound bombs and water cannons, according to an AFP reporter who saw several lightly injured demonstrators.

The protesters gathered on Tahrir Square in central Baghdad, removed barbed wire on one of the main bridges over the Tigris and massed outside the Green Zone.

The Sadr supporters, who have been protesting for months to demand reforms and an end to corruption, pushed past a gate of the Green Zone but were swiftly pinned back.

Sadr supporters had encountered relatively little resistance when they pulled down slabs of blast walls surrounding the Green Zone last month and were able to enter the main parliament building.

The breach of the Green Zone, which is also home to the prime minister’s office as well as the US and several other embassies, further deepened the country’s political crisis.

Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi has proposed reforms and wants to replace the current government of party-affiliated ministers with a cabinet of technocrats.

Many parties, however, have resisted a move that would undermine the very patronage system that is the main source of their power.

Sadr, a Najaf-based cleric who once fought the US occupation, has recently cast himself as a champion of the drive against corruption.

His followers pulled out of the Green Zone a day after breaking in three weeks ago, but warned they would return if parliament again failed to take swift action on reforms.

Sadr supporters have also blamed the government for a series of bomb attacks in Baghdad, including a very deadly one in their bastion of Sadr City, even though the Islamic State militant group claimed responsibility for them.