Muqtada al Sadr, the Iraqi cleric whose retirement from politics prompted his supporters to storm the government palace on Monday, condemned the violence and called for an end to the deadly clashes.
PROTESTERS BREACH IRAQ’S GREEN ZONE AND GOVERNMENT PALACE
His supporters breached the palace gates and pulled down the cement barriers in Baghdad’s secure Green Zone on Monday, prompting the military to order a nationwide curfew. Twenty-two people were killed, according to Reuters, as fighting occurred between Sadr’s supporters and rival Shiite Muslim factions with Iranian support.
“This is not a revolution because it has lost its peaceful character,” Sadr said in a televised address. “The spilling of Iraqi blood is forbidden,” adding, “There are uncontrolled militias, yes, but that does not mean the Sadrist Movement should also be uncontrolled.”
“I apologize to the Iraqi people,” he continued. “I was hoping for a peaceful demonstration, not with mortars and weapons. I don’t want such revolution.”
Shortly after his address, his supporters began to leave the Green Zone, according to the Washington Post.
Sadr had won broad support for opposing both U.S. and Iranian influence on Iraqi politics and was the big winner from October’s election, but he withdrew his party’s lawmakers from parliament in June after he was unable to form a government that excluded his opposition. The most recent source of fighting was sparked following an announcement from Sadr of his retirement and withdrawal from the government.
National Security Council coordinator John Kirby said the situation in Iraq was “disturbing” but reiterated that the United States was not evacuating its embassy staffers.
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“If we were conducting an evacuation, I promise I wouldn’t be able to be on the line with you right now,” the senior U.S. military official told reporters on Monday. “We’d be completely inundated with an evacuation. That is not the case. And so I don’t know where a bunch of that reporting is coming from. But the embassy, I am certainly aware of the ongoing protests in and around the Green Zone, and, as you know, have been going on more or less for the past several weeks, but there is no change to our status in the embassy.”
Sadr’s supporters include a thousands-strong militia, in addition to millions of other loyal supporters, while he has strongly opposed foreign interference, whether that be from the West or Iran.
