Iraqi Protesters Attack Iranian Consulate
Iraqi protesters attacked the Iranian Consulate in Karbala (city pictured above). (Wikimedia Commons)
Three Iraqi protesters were killed after storming the Iranian Consulate in Karbala on November 3. The protesters, who have been demonstrating since early October, reportedly targeted the Iranian Consulate due to allegations of Iranian interference in Iraqi affairs.
According to Al Jazeera, the protesters climbed the barriers surrounding the embassy and hung Iraqi flags on it. They also spray-painted messages such as “Karbala is free,” and “Iran out, out,” on the embassy walls.
There are conflicting reports as to how the three protesters died. Al Jazeera and The Independent write that government security forces opened fire, while BBC claims that “another account says unknown gunmen were responsible.”
The demonstrators, largely made up of disgruntled Iraqi youth, suggested that there was a menacing tone to the government’s response. One protestor told the Associated Press that “[government forces are] not firing up in the air. They intend to kill, not disperse.”
Hours before the attack on the consulate, Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi issued a statement in which he called on the demonstrators to “help restore normality to the country.” His plea to the protesters came one week after Iraqi President Barham Salih revealed that Abdul Mahdi will resign once a replacement is found.
Iran has attempted to underplay the incident. Iran's consul-general in Karbala, Mir-Masoud Hosseinian, said that everything had "returned to normal.” Al-Alam News Network, an Iranian state-owned media corporation, claimed that the embassy was stormed by an “anonymous group” that did not include Iraqi protesters. With Iran-Iraq relations seemingly unthreatened by the incident, the Iraqi government can continue to devote its full attention to the increasingly violent protests. The protests have killed more than 301 people and injured about 15,000, according to the Independent High Commission for Human Rights of Iraq.