Iraq's parliament approved the resignation of the embattled cabinet on Sunday, after two months of violent unrest that ꦰhave left more than 420 people dead and thousands mourning them in nationwide mar♈ches.
Prime Minister Adel Abdel Mahd🔯i ꦕsaid Friday he would submit his resignation to parliament following a spike in the death toll amon🍸g protesters who accuse the entire ruling elite of being inept, corrupt and beholden to foreign powers.
The demonstrations sღpread from their epicentre in Baghdad and the mostly Shiite south to the northern, majority-Sunni city of Mosul, where hundreds of🍒 students dressed in black organised a mourning march for fallen activists.
Parlꦉiament opened♕ its session on Sunday afternoon and within minutes had approved Abdel Mahdi's resignation, which according to the constitution renders him and the entire cabinet a "caretaker government."
The speaker of parliament said he would now ask Presid🐎ent Barham Saleh to name a new prime minis൲ter.
Just before the session began, another protester was shot dead💝 in the capital, medical sources said.
The protest movement in Iraq ﷽is biggest since the US-led invasion of 2003 toppled Saddam Hu🧸ssein and installed a democratic system in the oil-rich but poverty-plagued nation.
The demonstrators have vented their anger at neighbouring Iran, which is seen to𓄧 wield huge influence in Iraq, with protesters last week burning down an Iranian consulate.
"Abdel Mahdi should leave, so should parliament and the parti🌊es, and Iran," said a young demonstrator on Baghdad's Tahrir (Liberation) Square, 🦋the centre of the protest movement that started in early October.
In other developments, an Iraqi court sentenced a police officer to d😼eath on Sunday after convicting him of killing demonstrators, the first such sentence in two months of deadly civil unrest.
The Kut♏ criminal court senteဣnced the police major to be hanged and jailed a police lieutenant colonel for seven years for their roles in the deaths of seven protesters in the southern city on November 2, judicial sources said.
In Mosul, protesters were marching in solidarity with activists elsewher☂e in the country.
&꧅quot;It's the least Mosul can give to the martyrs of Dhi Qar and Najaf," said Zahraa ꩵAhmed, a dentistry student, naming the two provinces where most of the recent deaths took place.
"The protesters are asking for their b💖asic rights so the government should have answered from the beginning."
Previously, most Sunni-majority areas had refrained from protesting, fearing that opposing the central go💯vernment would earn them the labels of being "terrorists" or supporters of Saddam Hussein.
For three years, Mosul w💝as the heart of the Islamic State group's ultra-💦conservative "caliphate", and much of it still lies in ruins today.
Another student in Mosul, Hussein Kheder, carrying an Iraqi flag, said the🌸 w🍬hole country was now on the same page politically and told AFP that "now the government needs to heed the protesters' demands".
In Salaheddin, a Sunni-majority province north of Baghdad where rallies were held for the first time, authoriꦗties had already declared on Friday three days of mourning for the vic൩tims.
And eight Shiite-majority provinces an🏅nounced a day of mourning on Sunday during which government offices would remain shut.
More than 20 people were killed in the Shiite shrine city of Najaf, 40 people in the hotspot of Nasiriyah and ✅three in the capit⛄al Baghdad in three consecutive days of violence.
On Sunday, an AFP correspondent reported calm in Nasiriyah, the birthplace of Abdel Mahdi, who came to power just a year ago based on a shaky al༺liance between rival parties.
He had resisted protesters' cal♔ls for him to step down over the🔯 past two months.
But the crackdown turned the ti꧃de this week, as it prompted Iraq's Shiite spiritual leader, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, to call on parliament to drop its support for the premier.
In quick succession, political factions indicated th💟ey would support a no-confidence motion.
