Iraqi PM Threatens To Quit Over Ongoing Political Violence

Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi on Tuesday threatened to resign due to the violence that has broken out among Shi’ite factions over a long-standing political conflict. In a televised speech, al-Kadhimi said, “The Iraqi blood that was shed yesterday sends a warning to every Iraqi that today we must put weapons under the authority of the state.”

Kadhimi warned that “if chaos, conflict, discord, and hostility continue and the voice of reason is not heard,” he would take the “moral and patriotic step” of vacating the premiership and would hold the conflicting parties responsible “before the Iraqis and before history.”

“Every drop of blood” shed among Iraqis “is caused by chronic political failure.”

Earlier on Tuesday, Iraqi President Barham Salih also said in a televised speech that “going to early elections under a national understanding represents a way out of the stifling crisis in the country instead of political dispute or clash.”

The president called on the Coordination Framework, an umbrella group of Shiite parties that is the largest alliance in parliament, and the leader of the Sadrist Movement, the Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, to come up with a joint solution regarding the need for new elections and the formation of a new government.

Sadr, in his own televised address on Tuesday from Najaf, south of the capital Baghdad, called on his followers to end their protests and withdraw from the Green Zone in Baghdad, after clashes killed 22 people and wounded more than 200 others.

Sadr apologized for the violence, saying that he only supported peaceful protests, “not bullets and bombs.” He called on his followers to withdraw from the sites of violent clashes within an hour or he “will not recognize them.”

Clashes between Sadr’s supporters and troops of the Popular Mobilization Forces, former paramilitaries integrated into the Iraqi forces, had calmed down overnight but resumed again on this morning.

By now the death toll exceeds 30 and around 600 have been injured.

On Monday, Sadr’s supporters stormed the government headquarters in the Green Zone after he announced that he was quitting politics in protest against corruption among the country’s political parties.