Sermons spark riots in Iraqi Kurdish city

usatoday.com

3 12 2011

BAGHDAD (AP) – Rioters attacked liquor stores, a massage parlor and hotels after being stirred up by fiery sermons in a predominantly Kurdish city in north Iraq, police officials said Saturday. Pro-government crowds then attacked Islamist party offices in retaliation, they said.

Thirty people including 20 policemen were reported injured in the rampage, which followed Friday midday prayers in the town of Zakho, some 300 miles northwest of Baghdad. Zakho lies within the territory controlled by Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government.

Some 30 liquor stores, four hotels, and a massage parlor in and around the city near the Turkish border were ransacked, set on fire or otherwise damaged, they said.Read more…

More news

• Rioters attack liquor stores in Iraqi Kurdistan
• Kurdish leader: Clerics ‘instigated … acts of sabotage,’ wounding 25
• Sermons spark riots in Iraqi Kurdish city
• Crowds rampage in Iraqi Kurdish city after sermons
• Kurdish President Deplores Zakho Riots
• Rioters Attack Liquor Stores, Offices of Local Islamic Party

Informations

Zakho (Kurdish: Zaxo, زاخو; Arabic: زاخو; Syriac-Aramaic: ܙܟܼܘ) is a district and a town in Northern Iraq located a few kilometers from the Iraqi–Turkish border. Zakho is a province of the Dohuk Governorate. The city has 200,000 inhabitants.^[2] It may have originally begun on a small island in the Little Khabur which currently flows through the city. The Khabur River flows west of Zakho to form the border between Iraq and Turkey and flows into the Tigris. The most important rivers in the district of Zakho are: the Zeriza river, the Seerkotik river and the Little Khabur river.

~ par Alain Bertho sur 4 décembre 2011.

Publié dans émeutes, riots, الشغب