BAGHDAD: Iraq’s judiciary will resume its activities on Wednesday after powerful Shiite cleric Moqtada Al-Sadr called on his supporters to withdraw from outside its headquarters, the state news agency INA reported.
The Supreme Judicial Council earlier on Tuesday suspended its work after Sadr supporters camped out near its headquarters to demand that it dissolve parliament, escalating one of the worst political crises since the US-led invasion in 2003.
“In light of the withdrawal of the demonstrators and the lifting of the siege on the headquarters of the Supreme Judicial Council and the Federal Supreme Court, it was decided to resume work normally in all courts as of tomorrow morning,” the council said.
The populist leader Sadr has helped inflame tensions in Iraq in recent weeks by commanding thousands of followers to storm and occupy parliament, preventing the formation of a government nearly 10 months after elections.
However, he called on his supporters on Tuesday to withdraw from the vicinity of the judiciary authority and to keep only the protest tents and banners outside the building.
In a statement, he also urged the protesters to continue their sit-in outside the parliament.
The judiciary condemned the gathering of protesters outside its headquarters as “unconstitutional behavior,” adding that protesters had sent threats by phone.
Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi, who cut short a trip to Egypt to deal with the crisis, urged all sides to calm down and renewed calls for a national dialogue.
In a statement, Kadhimi said disrupting the judiciary “exposes the country to serious risks.”
The standoff in Iraq is the longest stretch without a fully functioning government in the nearly two decades since Saddam Hussein was overthrown in a US-led invasion in 2003.
Sadr was the biggest winner of the 2021 election but was unable to form a government with Kurdish and Sunni Muslim Arab parties, excluding his Iran-backed Shiite rivals.
The young cleric, who has unmatched influence in Iraq, can quickly mobilize hundreds of thousands of followers to stage demonstrations and paralyze the country’s byzantine politics.
Sadr has called for early elections and unspecified changes to the constitution after withdrawing his lawmakers from parliament in June.
“The people are demanding the parliament to be dissolved and the immediate formation of an interim government,” said a protester draped in an Iraqi flag.
“Help us. Stand with us. Don’t be afraid of anyone,” said another demonstrator.
Sadr’s political opponents, mostly fellow Shiites backed by Iran, have refused to accede to his demands, raising fears of fresh unrest and violence in a conflict-weary Iraq.
He survived upheaval in the 19 years since his Mehdi Army militia took on the Americans with assault rifles and rocket-propelled grenades in the streets and alleys of Baghdad and southern cities.
His followers also fought the Iraqi army, Daesh militants and rival Shiite militias.
Most of Iraq’s Shiite political establishment remains suspicious or even hostile to Sadr. Still, his political organization, the Sadrist movement, has come to dominate the apparatus of the Iraqi state since the 2018 election, taking senior jobs within the interior, defense and communications ministries.
Iraqi judiciary to resume work amid political crisis fueled by cleric Sadr
https://arab.news/9hdcs
Iraqi judiciary to resume work amid political crisis fueled by cleric Sadr
- The Supreme Judicial Council earlier on Tuesday suspended its work after Sadr supporters camped out near its headquarters
- The judiciary condemned the gathering of protesters outside its headquarters as “unconstitutional behavior“
Israeli fire kills 11 Palestinians in Gaza, including two children, local hospital officials say
- The two boys were killed in separate incidents
- It wasn’t immediately clear whether the men had crossed into Israeli-controlled areas
CAIRO: Israeli forces on Wednesday killed at least 11 Palestinians in Gaza, including two 13-year-old boys who were collecting firewood, three journalists and a woman, hospitals in the war-battered enclave said.
The Israeli military did not immediately comment on any of the incidents.
The two boys were killed in separate incidents. In one strike, the 13-year-old, his father and a 22-year old man were hit by Israeli drones on the eastern side of the central Bureij refugee camp, according to officials from Al-Aqsa Martyrs Hospital in the central town of Deir Al-Balah, which received the bodies.
It wasn’t immediately clear whether the men had crossed into Israeli-controlled areas.
The other 13-year-old was shot and killed by troops while collecting firewood in the eastern town of Bani Suheila, the Nasser hospital said, after receiving the body. In a footage circulated online, the boy’s father is seen weeping over his son’s body on a hospital bed.
Later Wednesday, an Israeli strike on the central town of Zahraa hit a vehicle carrying three Palestinian journalists who were filming a newly established displacement camp managed by an Egyptian government committee, said Mohammed Mansour, the committee’s spokesman.
The bodies of two journalists were taken to the Shifa hospital in Gaza City, while the third body was taken to Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital.
Mansour said the journalists were documenting the committee’s work in the newly established camp in the Netzarim area in central Gaza. He said the strike occurred about 5 kilometers (3 miles) from the Israeli-controlled area.
He said the vehicle was known to the Israeli military as belonging to the Egyptian committee.
Video footage circulating online showed the charred, bombed-out vehicle by the roadside, smoke still rising from the wreckage, with debris scattered about.
Nasser Hospital officials also said they received the body of a Palestinian woman shot and killed by Israeli troops in the Muwasi area of the southern city of Khan Younis, which is not controlled by the military.
In a separate attack, three brothers were killed in a tank shelling in the Bureij camp, according to Al-Aqsa Martyrs hospital, where the bodies were taken.
The deaths were the latest among Palestinians in Gaza since the ceasefire that stopped the war between Hamas and Israel went into effect in October.
More than 470 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli fire, according to the strip’s health ministry. At least 77 have been killed by Israeli gunfire near a ceasefire line that splits the territory between Israeli-held areas and most of Gaza’s Palestinian population, the ministry says.
The ministry, which is part of the Hamas-led government, maintains detailed casualty records that are seen as generally reliable by UN agencies and independent experts.
The ceasefire paused two years of war between Israel and Hamas militants and allowed a surge in humanitarian aid into Gaza, mainly food.
But residents say shortages of blankets and warm clothes remain, and there is little wood for fires. There’s been no central electricity in Gaza since the first few days of the war in 2023, and fuel for generators is scarce.
More than 100 children who have died since the start of the ceasefire in October — a figure that includes a 27-day-old girl who died from hypothermia over the weekend.
