{"id":18417,"date":"2020-01-25T04:28:05","date_gmt":"2020-01-25T04:28:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/?p=18417"},"modified":"2020-01-25T04:28:05","modified_gmt":"2020-01-25T04:28:05","slug":"iraqis-hold-million-man-march-to-call-for-expulsion-of-us-forces","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/iraqis-hold-million-man-march-to-call-for-expulsion-of-us-forces\/","title":{"rendered":"Iraqis Hold \u2019Million-Man March\u2019 to Call for Expulsion of US Forces"},"content":{"rendered":"

Alwaght-\u00a0<\/strong>Iraqi people held million-man march in capital on Friday, calling for expulsion of American forces from the Arab country following US regime\u2019s assassination deputy head of Iraq\u2019s Popular Mobilization Forces Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis as well as Iranian Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani near Baghdad International airport.<\/p>\n

Sayyed Sadiq al-Hashemi, the director of the Iraqi Center for Studies, said more than 2.5 million took part in the demonstrations.<\/p>\n

Since the early hours on Friday, huge crowds\u00a0of men, women and children of all ages converged on the Jadriyah neighborhood near\u00a0Baghdad University.<\/p>\n

The protesters were seen carrying banners and chanting slogans calling for the expulsion of US forces.<\/p>\n

“Get out, get out, occupier!” some shouted, while others chanted, “Yes to sovereignty!”<\/p>\n

Iraq’s\u00a0al-Ahd\u00a0news network reported that Iraqis from all of the country’s provinces\u00a0had gathered in the city.<\/p>\n

On January 5, the Iraqi parliament voted overwhelmingly in favor of a resolution calling for the expulsion of all foreign forces after the US assassination of General Qassem Soleimani and his Iraqi trenchmate Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis.<\/p>\n

The massive rally came\u00a0after influential cleric Muqtada al-Sadr called on Iraqis to stage “a million-strong, peaceful, unified demonstration to condemn the American presence and its violations”.<\/p>\n

Sadr issued a statement on Friday calling for\u00a0US bases to be shut down and Iraqi airspace closed to US warplanes and surveillance aircraft.<\/p>\n

He warned that US presence in the country will be dealt with as an occupying force if Washington does not agree with Iraqi demands to withdraw for the country.<\/p>\n

In a message delivered through a representative at Friday prayer in the holy city of Karbala, top cleric Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani also urged Iraqi political groups to do what is needed to the safeguard the country’s sovereignty.<\/p>\n

He called on Iraqi groups to stand united,\u00a0far from any foreign influence in countering the dangers which threaten the country.<\/p>\n

On\u00a0Thursday ahead of the planned rallies, Sadr called on Iraqis to mobilize and defend the country’s independence and sovereignty.<\/p>\n

“Oh women, men and youth of the country, the time is now upon us to defend the country, its sovereignty and dependence,” Sadr said in a tweet.<\/p>\n

“Spread the word of an independent future Iraq that will be ruled by the righteous; an Iraq which will not know of corruption nor aggression” he added, calling on Iraqis to expel the “tyrants”.<\/p>\n

Various\u00a0Iraqi resistance groups affiliated with the country’s Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) have also backed the anti-American rally.<\/p>\n

\u00a0\u2018Zero hour in face-off with US\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

Speaking to the Lebanese al-Mayadeen television channel, Jaafar al-Husseini, a spokesman for the PMF-affiliated Kata’ib Hezbollah resistance group, said “other means” will be used against the Americans if they do not leave Iraq.<\/p>\n

The American presence, he said, has led to corruption and instability in the country.<\/p>\n

In an interview with Iran’s Tasnim news agency, Firas al-Yasser, a member of the political bureau of Iraq’s\u00a0Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba,\u00a0said Friday’s\u00a0rallies marked “a new chapter” in the Arab country’s relations with the US.<\/p>\n

He said\u00a0Iraqi resistance groups support the stance of the country’s clerical leadership, which does not tolerate Washington’s \u201ctheory of dependence and humiliation” of Iraq.<\/p>\n

“We believe we have reached the zero hour in facing off with the US,” he said.<\/p>\n

Yasser added that Iran’s missile attack on the Ain al-Assad base in the western Iraqi province of Anbar earlier this month was a “prelude” to the expulsion of US forces from the country.<\/p>\n

Qais\u00a0al-Khazali, leader of\u00a0Asa’ib\u00a0Ahl al-Haq, which is part of the PMU,\u00a0described Friday’s rallies as a “second revolution” a century after the Great Iraqi Revolution of 1920 against British forces.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Alwaght-\u00a0Iraqi people held million-man march in capital on Friday, calling for expulsion of American forces from the Arab country following US regime\u2019s assassination deputy head of Iraq\u2019s Popular Mobilization Forces Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis as well as Iranian Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani near Baghdad International airport. Sayyed Sadiq al-Hashemi, the director of the Iraqi Center for …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":18418,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[432],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-supreme-leader"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18417"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18417\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18419,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18417\/revisions\/18419"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18418"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wilayah.info\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}