Increase to 125 the wounded by the clashes in Baghdad during the second taking of the Parliament

July 30 (EUROPA PRESS) –

There are already 125 wounded, including 25 members of the Iraqi security forces, due to the clashes in Baghdad between the Police and the Army of the country against the thousands of supporters of the cleric Muqtada al Sadr who this Saturday have once again taken over Parliament paralyze the Iraqi capital in protest at the candidacy of the pro-Iranian Shia politician Mohamed Shia al Sudani, a rival of the cleric, for the post of prime minister.

Most of the capital’s bridges and its main roads are paralyzed while the religious’s supporters have surrounded the headquarters of the Federal Judicial Council, as well as the Supreme Court, while the country’s political leaders, with the current prime minister, Mostafá al Kazemi, at the head they have called for calm.

Before the sit-in inside Parliament that the protesters who have entered the chamber again, after doing so for the first time on Wednesday, the president of the institution, Mohamed al Halbusi, has asked the chamber’s security services to refrain from using violence against Al Sadr supporters.

“Al Halbusi has ordered the protection services of the Parliament not to attack or harm the protesters, and not to carry weapons inside the Chamber,” according to a note collected by INA.

Similarly, the President of Parliament has ordered the General Secretariat of the House of Representatives to be present in the chamber to talk with the participants in the sit-in.

The United Nations mission in Iraq has also called for “reason and wisdom” to “prevent more violence” for the benefit of all Iraqis, according to a statement collected by the official Iraqi news agency INA.

The cleric Muqtada al Sadr, whose Sayyrun coalition won the legislative elections last year, has spent months denouncing the inability of the rest of the political forces to form a new government, and has assured that the pro-Iranian group to which the candidate Al Sudani, Marco de Coordination, great defeated in the elections, should not have a presence in the new Executive.

However, and after the resignation in June of the Sadrite parliamentary bloc due to the blockage in the negotiations, the pro-Iranian group decided to take a step forward and present the former Minister of Labor and Social Affairs as a candidate.

Iraq is already going through its longest period of government negotiations since the first elections held in 2005 under the auspices of the United States; a situation that has led both the population and the country’s political class to a state of permanent frustration and prevented OPEC’s second largest oil producer from extracting the corresponding benefits from the increase in crude oil prices.