Protesters in front of the entrance to the highly fortified green zone of the Iraqi capital Baghdad.
Baghdad:
Several hundred protesters gathered in the Iraqi capital on Saturday afternoon to demand that US troops leave the country in accordance with a parliamentary vote earlier this year.
“We will choose resistance if the vote in parliament is not ratified!” Read one of the banners at the protest, which took place near an entrance to the Green High Security Zone, where the United States Embassy and other foreign missions are located.
Others carried signs bearing the logo of Hashed al-Shaabi, a state-sponsored network of armed groups, many of which were backed by powerful Iraqi neighbor Iran.
Following a US strike on Baghdad in January that killed Iranian General Qasem Soleimani and deputy head of Hashed, outraged Iraqi parliamentarians voted to oust all foreign forces deployed in the country.
The United States has sent thousands of troops to Iraq since 2014 to lead an international coalition helping Baghdad fight the jihadist group Islamic State.
Washington has reduced these forces in recent months to around 3,000, and other coalition countries have also reduced their footprint.
From October 2019, rockets regularly targeted these troops as well as diplomats at the US Embassy.
During the summer, there was a marked increase in attacks on coalition logistics convoys using road bombs.
Enraged by the ongoing attacks, the United States threatened at the end of September to close its embassy in Baghdad and to carry out bombings against elements of the Hashed hardline.
Pro-Iranian factions announced a temporary truce in October that ended the attacks, with no rockets targeting the embassy or foreign troops since.
Iraq has long been caught up in the struggle for influence between its two main allies, the United States and Iran, with the intensification of the standoff under US President Donald Trump.
Baghdad has closely followed the results of the US presidential election, seeing a change in the White House as a sign that tensions between Washington and Tehran may ease.
(This story was not edited by GalacticGaming staff and is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.)
