BAGHDAD: Iraq’s Shi’ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr called on the Iraqi government and parliament on Friday to vote to close the U.S. embassy in Iraq for its “unfettered support of Israel.”
“If the government and parliament do not abide by this demand, we will go for further actions which we will later announce,” the statement said.
Hundreds of supporters of Iranian-backed Iraqi paramilitary groups gathered last week at Iraq’s main border crossing with Jordan to express solidarity with Gaza and call for an end to Israel’s blockade.
Some 800 supporters of Iraq’s Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), an umbrella group of mainly Shi’ite militia, departed from Baghdad last week 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.
Meanwhile, the United Nations agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, says more than 600,000 Gazans have been made homeless by Israeli bombardment, at least three times more than its shelters can hold.
Ten more trucks food and medical supplies arrived in the enclave, along with 10 foreign doctors, on Friday, the first to enter since Israel tightened its blockade on Gaza nearly three weeks ago, a Palestinian official at Gaza’s Rafah border crossing with Egypt said.
A U.N. official said earlier that around 74 trucks had crossed since the start of the conflict, making some 84 altogether. The U.N. says Gaza needs around 100 trucks every day to meet essential needs and the official said negotiations were taking place with Israel, which wants to prevent resources reaching Hamas, to find a faster mechanism.
