Rockets Hit Baghdad’s Green Zone, Leaving Major Casualties
MEP: Several rockets landed in Baghdad’s highly fortified Green Zone on Saturday night following clashes at anti-government protests that killed at least eight people and nearly 360 injured.
According to Iraqi security and hospital officials, the dead and injured were delivered to several hospitals in the city. The victims had been teargassed and injured by rubber bullets.
The clashes occurred between police and supporters of cleric Muqtada al-Sadr.
“Several Katyusha rockets fired from the Baladiyat and Palestine Street areas landed in the Green Zone,” said Iraq’s Joint Operations Command in a statement, without referring to the origin of the rockets.
Earlier on Saturday, thousands of protesters, demanding electoral reform, tried to storm the area.
They argue that the country’s current electoral rules are tailored in favor of Iraq’s major parties, which they say are involved in nepotism and corruption.
Rising to his call to protest, demonstrators gathered near the Green Zone – a cluster of embassies and government buildings – to demand an overhaul of the commission that supervises elections before a provincial vote due in September.
