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Iraqi Protester Shot Dead As Anti-Regime Rallies Continue

Agence France-Presse

   BAGHDAD - An Iraqi activist was shot dead overnight in Baghdad, a
   police source told AFP on Thursday, as anti-government rallies carried
   on despite a separate day-long siege of the U.S. embassy.

   The activist, Saadoun al-Luhaybi, was shot in the head in a
   southwestern neighborhood of the Iraqi capital, the police source said.

   He had been taking part in youth-led demonstrations rocking Iraq since
   early October that have demanded the ouster of a governing class seen
   as corrupt, inept and beholden to Iran.

   The protesters have occupied Baghdad's iconic Tahrir Square, just
   across the river Tigris from the Green Zone, home to government
   offices, the United Nations headquarters and foreign embassies.

   On Tuesday, an angry mob marched into the Green Zone and to the US
   embassy, outraged over American air strikes that killed fighters from
   the Hashed al-Shaabi military force.

   They besieged the embassy for just over 24 hours, leaving on Wednesday
   afternoon after an order from the Hashed.

   The anti-government demonstrators who have been taking to the streets
   for months insist their movement is entirely unrelated to the crowds
   that besieged and vandalized the American mission.

   "We've got nothing to do with that," one demonstrator in the southern
   protest hotspot city of Diwaniyah told AFP.

   Protesters still occupied the streets in the city, where they have shut
   down most government offices and schools.

   They briefly allowed local government offices to reopen to let
   employees receive their salaries at the end of the year, an AFP
   correspondent said.

   Violence also hit the southern city of Nasiriyah overnight, with two
   activists surviving separate attempts on their lives.

   Around a dozen activists have died in targeted killings across the
   country, among the nearly 460 lives lost in protest-related violence
   over the past three months.

   Demonstrators have warned that these killings, along with kidnappings
   and different forms of harassment, are an attempt to scare them into
   halting their movement.

   "What happened in front of the U.S. embassy was an attempt to draw
   people's eyes away from the popular protests now in their fourth
   month," said Ahmed Mohammad Ali, a student protester in Nasiriyah.

   "We're still here, protesting for change and hoping for victory," he
   told AFP.