The protesters appeared to make themselves comfortable during their time in the Green Zone; a Washington Post reporter noticed demonstrators enjoying a swim during their sit-in.
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Three bombs went off in and around Baghdad on Monday, killing at least 14 people, including Shi’ite Muslim worshippers conducting an annual pilgrimage inside the capital, police and medical sources said.
Sadr wants to see Abadi’s proposed technocrat government approved, ending a quota system that its opponents say has encouraged corruption.
Iraqi security forces try to prevent supporters of cleric Moqtada al-Sadr from entering Baghdad’s heavily fortified “Green Zone”.
Monday’s attack came a day after two vehicle bombs in the southern Iraqi city of Samawah killed at least 31 people and wounded 52, an attack that was also claimed by the Islamic State.
Hundreds of demonstrators on Saturday stormed the city’s Green Zone, a large protected swath of land that includes the US and other embassies and the Iraq government’s ministries and parliament, to protest Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi’s inability to overhaul his cabinet and how Iraq’s parliament is selected, which al-Sadr’s forces and al-Abadi blame for contributing to the country’s political corruption. The protesters left the building on Sunday. They had not been searched before entering the Green Zone, he said. Earnest said the coalition carried out 59 airstrikes and six artillery strikes against Islamic State targets in northern Iraq and the Anbar province last weekend.
A state of emergency was declared for the city and Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi demanded arrest of protest leaders.
The Islamic State took responsibility, claiming a militant “blew up his auto in the middle of a gathering of the Shiite Ministry of Interior Special Forces” and was followed by a second who “blew up his vehicle and killed more people”.
“We kept on warning politicians to stop corruption but no one listened”, said one protester, who gave his name as Abo Zaid.
Several of the casualties were pilgrims passing through the area on their way to Baghdad’s northern neighborhood of Kadhimiyah to commemorate the martyrdom anniversary of the seventh Shia Imam, Musa ibn Jafar al-Kazim (PBUH).
But at least 23 people were killed in a bombing targeting pilgrims just outside Baghdad on Saturday.
According to the United Nations, at least 741 Iraqis were killed in April as a result of the ongoing violence, a sharp decline from the previous month.
Iraqi officials said on Monday that the largest bomb attack killed 11 and wounded 30 others in the Saydiya district of southern Baghdad.
Separately, explosives planted on the ground in Tarmiyah, located 25 kilometers (15 miles) north of Baghdad, killed two people and wounded six others.
Speaking to Al Arabiya News Channel from Iraq, Awad Al-Awadi, a deputy in the Iraqi parliament representing the Al-Ahrar bloc of the Sadrist Movement, said that a pending solution “depends on the political blocs first”.
Iraq’s Council of Representatives (CoR), Iraq’s parliament, has been embroiled in internal power struggles for the past month while al-Abadi has attempted to reconcile the government.
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Baghdad Operations Command confirmed that additional security forces were deployed Saturday to the Green Zone after protesters breached its walls.
