Iraqi police fired in the air as hundreds of protesters tried to storm the main provincial government building in Basra on Sunday, wounding four people in the seventh day of unrest that has swept southern cities over poor services, police sources said.
"Some of the protesters tried to storm the building. We prevented them by using water cannons and tear gas," said one of the police sources.
An activist told AP that thousands of protesters gathered on Sunday outside the local government building and closed the roads leading to major oil fields north and west of Basra.
There were also similar protests on Saturday in Baghdad.
Earlier, Iraqi Prime Minister, commander-in-chief of Iraq’s armed forces, Haider al-Abadi, had issued a nationwide order placing security forces on high alert in the southern provinces in response to week-long protests against lack of government services and corruption in the southern governorates.
Reinforcement troops from both the Counter-Terrorism Service and the Army’s Ninth Division have already been dispatched to Basra to help protect the province’s oil fields, security sources said.
Abadi’s directive aims to control the ongoing protests, which on Friday spread from Basra, where residents had blocked access to the nearby commodities port of Umm Qasr, to the cities of Amara, Nasiriya and Najaf.
Demonstrations continue in Basra for the seventh day in a row to protest unemployment and lack of services. Tensions increased after a demonstrator was killed last Sunday.
The death toll from the demonstrations rose to 3 on Friday night, after two demonstrators died after sustaining injury from gunshot wounds in the provincial capital Amarah. Spokesman for the Maysan health authorities, Ahmad al-Kanani, said it was not clear who killed them but added there had been "indiscriminate gunfire" in the city.
Media reports indicated that several protests were held outside the headquarters of various political parties in Maysan, including Abadi's Dawa Party, and some were set on fire.
On Friday Abadi flew to Basra to try to restore calm, where he immediately met with head of military operations, tribal sheiks, and local officials.
After visiting Basra, the prime minister chaired a security cabinet meeting in Baghdad, his office said in a statement accusing "infiltrators" of feeding on "peaceful protests to attack public and private property".
"Our forces will take all the necessary measures to counter those people," the statement asserted.
But Abadi’s visit didn’t bring stability to the city as demonstrations spread to Dhi Qar and Najaf. On Friday, angry protesters stormed into Najaf International Airport, and other protesters tried to burn the offices of some parties in the city, before the situation calmed down.
A small protest also took place after midnight in the northern Baghdad district of al-Shula amid a heavy deployment of security forces.
Rumors circulated the social media calling for massive demonstrations to take place on Saturday in Baghdad. Some urged demonstrators to head for the fortified Green Zone, an area where the country's key institutions and embassies are located.
Iraqi politicians face growing unrest as they try to form a coalition government after a May 12 parliamentary election tainted by allegations of fraud.
Abadi is heading a fragile caretaker government, in place until the new government is formed.
A political bloc led by cleric Moqtada al-Sadr won a majority in the poll on an anti-corruption platform which had appeal across Iraq’s electorate.
