Shiites hold huge protest in southern town to demand local democracy

[La_Serpiente]

Shiites hold huge protest in southern town to demand local democracy

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Thousands of Shiite Muslims protested in a southern city demanding the U.S.-appointed provincial governor's resignation, as a suicide bomber driving a van with ambulance markings killed three people in the capital.

The protest Wednesday by some 10,000 people in Nasiriyah town is the latest sign of the growing empowerment of Iraq's majority Shiites who were repressed for decades by Saddam Hussein's Sunni-dominated regime.

Sunni insurgents loyal to the captured dictator are blamed for much of the ongoing violence in the country, such as Wednesday's suicide van bombing in an upscale Baghdad neighborhood.

The violence and the wider Shiite demands for early general elections have become the biggest headaches for the U.S.-led coalition administration as it nears a self-imposed deadline to hand over power to an unelected Iraqi government on July 1.

"No to Israel! No to imperialism! No to America!" the crowd chanted in Nasiriyah, about 350 kilometers (215 miles) southeast of Baghdad, demanding that provincial governor Sabri al-Roumaith step down.

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Shiites hold huge protest in southern town to demand local democracy