Security forces clash with graduates at Basra oil firms
Shafaq News- Basra
Security forces clashed with graduates demanding jobs outside several oil companies in Iraq’s southern Basra province on Sunday, a Shafaq News correspondent reported.
Security personnel deployed around the companies after tensions broke out during the demonstrations. It was not immediately clear whether anyone was injured or whether there was property damage.
Separately, Education Directorate employees in Al-Muqdadiyah, Diyala province, protested after electricity had been cut for more than a month, calling for power to be restored and saying fuel supplies were insufficient to keep a generator running through the outages.
On April 19, sources and protest representatives told Shafaq News that six demonstrators were detained and 12 injured when a security force dispersed engineering graduates and oil-sector specialists outside Basra Oil Company’s Zaqura site. Mahdi Al-Tamimi, head of Iraq’s High Commission for Human Rights office in Basra, later called for an investigation.
Engineering, petroleum, and science graduates also launched an open-ended sit-in outside Basra Oil Company in July and blocked its gates while demanding Oil Ministry contracts at profitable state oil companies. Protest representative Hassan Al-Shawi said they had raised the issue with the oil minister weeks earlier without receiving a response.
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