Death toll rises in Iraq as top cleric calls for electoral reform
by Jordan Hilger, Worthy News Correspondent
(Worthy News) – Four more protestors were killed in Baghdad Friday as a top Shi’ite cleric called on the Iraqi government to abandon its hardline tactics.
Police fired tear gas canisters and bullets at demonstrators on a central Baghdad bridge, aiming for their heads, bringing the total death toll since protests began in early October to 330 and injuring 61 others.
U.N. mission chief Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert called on Iraqi parliament to “act on their constituents’ legitimate demands for credible, free and fair elections,” a dimension of the protests that have rocked the Shi’ite-majority nation along with Lebanon and Iran.
The seemingly spontaneous protests in the three nations, all beginning within weeks of each other, have been called a color revolution by the Iranian theocracy instigated by the US and its allies, presumably to destabilize the regime in places where it has proxy holdouts.
Israel has also expanded its air campaign against Iran to Hezbollah targets in Lebanon and Iranian paramilitaries in Iraq in recent months.