17 dead in Baghdad clashes

GBNEWS24DESK//

Heavy clashes erupted in Baghdad, killing almost 20 people on Monday, after powerful Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr said he would quit politics, prompting his loyalists to storm a government palace and fight with rival groups.

As night fell, machine-gun fire and explosions rang out, with tracer fire rising into the sky above the Green Zone that houses government headquarters and foreign embassies, in the worst fighting the Iraqi capital has seen in years.

It followed a day of violence prompted by Sadr’s announcement that he would withdraw from all political activity – a decision he said was in response to the failure of other Shi’ite leaders and parties to reform a corrupt and decaying governing system, reports Reuters.

Sadr later said he was staging a hunger strike in protest against the use of weapons by all sides.

A political standoff between Sadr and Shi’ite Muslim rivals who are mostly backed by Iran has sent Iraq spiralling into yet another round of violence as it struggles to recover from decades of war, sanctions, civil strife and endemic corruption.

Since 2003, Iraqi groups have engaged in sectarian conflict and, more recently, intra-sectarian, intra-ethnic political competition.