“Security forces fired tear gas to disperse demonstrators who stormed the Green Zone”.
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Fadhil al-Shuwaili, a member of the health committee on Baghdad’s provincial council, said three people had been confirmed killed: one by a gunshot to the head, one by a gunshot to the stomach and another who suffocated.
The additional Green Zone security has caused massive traffic jams in the Iraqi capital, home to more than seven million people.
The protesters included supporters of the influential Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr.
The protesters gathered at Tahrir Square in central Baghdad before crossing Jumhuriyah Bridge over the Tigris River and converging on the Green Zone.
The Green Zone, once the USA military and administrative headquarters, houses Iraqi government offices and 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.
Protesters managed to hold the gate for some time despite repeatedly being tear gassed, but security forces eventually sallied out, firing automatic weapons into the air and unleashing more tear gas.
“We stormed them like the Palestinians storm the Israelis”, said Mehdi al-Rubai, 26, as he left the area.
Iraq’s political crisis broke out in February, when Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi announced plans to appoint a cabinet of independent technocrats, threatening to uproot a system of political patronage that makes the public administration open to corruption.
Earlier this month, hundreds of demonstrators knocked down concrete blast walls and broke into the parliament building. A curfew was slapped on Baghdad after the Green Zone breach. “Using live bullets against peaceful protesters is completely unjustified and stark evidence that a supposedly legitimate government has turned into an oppressive government”, he said in a statement on Saturday.
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Abadi has condemned the incursions and warned against chaos and strife as government forces seek to keep up momentum in their fight to drive the jihadists out of large swathes of northern and western Iraq that they seized in 2014.
