Anti-government protesters stand on concrete barriers placed by security forces, during clashes with the police, in downtown Baghdad
IRAQI security forces mounted concrete barriers in central Baghdad today as they sought to prevent protesters accessing government buildings.
Authorities had already cleared three bridges over the River Tigris. Demonstrators had confronted troops trying to stop them crossing into the Green Zone, the heavily fortified area demarcated by invading US troops in 2003 as the headquarters of their illegal occupation, which has since become the site of most government and state offices.
A bridge demolition on Friday was claimed to be a controlled explosion necessitated by the discovery of a bomb on its underside, but most protesters see the collapse as a deliberate step to cut off movement. On Saturday, security forces drove demonstrators from three central bridges in an operation that killed six, bringing the death toll since protests began at the start of last month to more than 260. Amnesty International declared: “This bloodbath must stop now.”
MOHAMMAD OMIDVAR, a senior figure in the Tudeh Party of Iran, tells the Morning Star that mass protests are rooted in poverty, corruption and neoliberal rule and warns against monarchist revival and US-engineered regime change
