Protests erupt in Dhi Qar over electricity cuts

Shafaq News- Dhi Qar

Dozens of people staged protests in the center and outskirts of Iraq's Dhi Qar province on Thursday over a sharp decline in electricity supply, Shafaq News correspondent reported.

The protesters blocked main roads with burning tires in anger over poor services, threatening to escalate and storm the main generation and distribution stations if authorities do not meet their demands to increase the province's share of power and secure supply. Some residential neighborhoods have gone without electricity entirely for two consecutive days.

The unrest in Dhi Qar follows a wider wave of summer protests across several Iraqi provinces, where temperatures have surpassed 50 degrees Celsius in some areas. In Wasit province, hundreds demonstrated as temperatures peaked at 44 degrees Celsius, and clashes left more than 50 police officers injured and more than 10 people detained.

Demand in Iraq exceeds 60,000 megawatts this summer against a shortfall of nearly 40,000 megawatts, according to the Ministry of Electricity, leaving many households with only a few hours of state-supplied electricity per day and forcing millions to rely on private generators. Transmission and distribution losses still reach about 60 percent.

The shortages are tied largely to gas supply. Iraq depends on Iranian gas imports to generate a substantial share of its electricity, and those supplies were disrupted after the war on Iran earlier this year and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, the ministry said.

Read more: 40-GW electricity gap forces Iraq to back private generators