Iraqis stage sit-in at Iraq-Jordan border calling for end to Gaza blockade

By Haider Kadhim and Kamal Ayash

BAGHDAD (Reuters) -Hundreds of supporters of Iranian-backed Iraqi paramilitary groups gathered on Friday at Iraq's main border crossing with Jordan to express solidarity with Gaza and call for an end to the blockade imposed by Israel. Some 800 supporters of Iraq's Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), an umbrella group of mainly Shi'ite militia, departed from Baghdad late on Thursday in buses for the Iraqi-Jordanian border crossing in western Anbar province. It is the closest access point from Iraq to the Israeli-occupied West Bank. Amid heavy security, protesters set up tents and staged a sit-in, demanding that Israel allow aid into Gaza. “No to Israel and normalization,” they chanted while waving Palestinian flags.

Hundreds of PMF supporters also gathered in Baghdad near the bridge that leads to the fortified Green Zone, home to the U.S. embassy and other missions in Baghdad.

Protesters in black outfits carried portraits of top Shi'ite Muslim cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, and Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, while waving the Palestinian and Iraq flags.

Israel has vowed to wipe out the Hamas Islamist group that rules Gaza, after its gunmen on Oct. 7 rampaged through Israeli towns and kibbutzes, killing 1,400 people.

Israel has pounded Gaza with air strikes and put the enclave's 2.3 million people under a total siege. At least 4,137 Palestinians have been killed, the Palestinian health ministry said.

“We are going to support our people in Palestine,” said 26-year-old Hussein Samir, as he sat in a bus just before leaving Baghdad late on Thursday.

“We condemn them, and we will give them a period of time; if they don’t lift the blockade, the resistance will begin, God willing, and the war against them (Israel) will begin." On Thursday influential Iraqi cleric Muqtada al-Sadr called for a peaceful sit-in at the Palestinian borders in Syria, Lebanon, Egypt and Jordan until Israel lifts the blockade on the enclave and aid is delivered to people in Gaza.

Sadr said protesters should only carry shrouds and not arms.

(Reporting by Amina Ismail, Kamal Ayash in Anbar, Haider kadhim in Baghdad, writing by Amina Ismail, editing by Deborah Kyvrikosaios)