Thousands of Iraqi Shias rallied on Friday in the country's biggest demonstration yet to support fellow Shia protesters confronting troops from Sunni Arab states in Bahrain. The movement of troops from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states to help Bahrain's Sunni royal family quell the protests has galvanised Shias in Iraq, Lebanon and Iran.
Around 10,000 followers of Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr demonstrated in Baghdad's Sadr City neighbourhood after Friday prayers over the situation in Bahrain, which risks exacerbating Iraq's own sectarian divide.
The Iraqis waved Bahraini and Iraqi flags and chanted "Yes, yes to Bahrain. No, no to the Saud family." "These protests are the beginning of support for the Bahraini people and if the Saudi and Bahraini rulers won't respond, we will act, even if we are forced to go and be human shields," said Muhanad al-Gharrawi, a Sadr aide in Sadr City. Thousands of Shias also took to the streets in the Shia holy city of Najaf and Iraq's oil hub of Basra, calling for an end to violence in Bahrain.
"This is a sectarian war led by Saudi (Arabia). It is the beginning of the downfall of Saudi itself," 39-year-old unemployed university graduate Ahmed Nour Addin, said in Basra. Bahrain has arrested seven opposition leaders and driven pro-democracy demonstrators from the streets after weeks of protests that prompted the king to declare martial law.
Three protesters died in the security sweep. Three policemen were also killed, hit by cars driven by demonstrators. As in Bahrain, Iraq's Shias form a majority that complained decades of oppression under a Sunni ruling class, dominant throughout the Arab world. Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and his ruling Shia bloc have condemned the deployment of Saudi troops, and smaller protests took place earlier this week.
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