More than 2,000 Shiites marched yesterday through Baghdad and some broke into the Jordanian embassy and raised the Iraqi flag atop it to protest the alleged involvement of a Jordanian in Iraq's single deadliest suicide bombing a February 28 attack south of Baghdad that killed 125 people. The protest came just two days after an influential Shiite leader claimed during Iraq's first National Assembly meeting that Jordan allegedly was not doing enough to prevent terrorists from slipping into Iraq.
At least 2,000 protesters converged on the Jordanian embassy after the Friday prayers at three Shiite mosques around Baghdad. They burned Israeli and Jordanian flags and shouted slogans against King Abdullah II. They chanted: "Take your embassy away! We do not want to see you!" and "There's no God but God, Abdullah is the enemy of God!" Three men in green camouflage, including one man wearing a black balaclava, were later seen on an embassy roof raising an Iraqi flag on a makeshift flagpole. Another flagpole with a crown that previously held the Jordanian flag was bare. Iraqi police and special forces gathered outside the embassy but failed to prevent demonstrators from reaching the building. |