Kurdes : émeute s à سلێمانی Sulaimanyiah – 18 avril 2011

81 hurt in Iraq clashes with protesters

AFP

By Shwan Mohammed

18 04 2011

SULAIMANIYAH, Iraq — Eighty-one people were wounded, nine by live fire, in a second day of clashes between protesters and security forces in Iraq’s northern city of Sulaimaniyah Monday, a medical official said.

« Eighty-one people were wounded, nine of them by bullets. Security forces personnel are among the wounded, » said Dr Raykot Hama Rashid, director of the main hospital in the second largest city in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan province.

The clashes took place in Peeramard Street in central Sulaimaniyah, which has seen near daily demonstrations since mid-February, and where Rashid had said 31 people were injured on Sunday, nine of them by bullets.

Security personnel, including from the Kurdish Peshmerga and Asayesh forces, surrounded the street, witnesses said. They said the forces torched a podium, preventing protest leaders from voicing their demands.

Babaker Hussein from the Kurdish opposition Goran party said that shooting at protesters would only fuel larger demonstrations.

« Shooting on the protesters will not stop them, and the government will see bigger demonstrations in the coming days, » he told AFP.

But a spokesman for the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, one of the two main parties that govern Iraqi Kurdistan, said the opposition had come prepared to provoke security forces. Read more…