BAGHDAD (Dispatches) – Hundreds of thousands took to the streets of Iraq on Friday calling for the removal U.S. troops from the country, following American airstrikes earlier this month that martyred a top Iraqi commander and Iranian General Qassem Soleimani.
Protesters chanted "get out, get out, occupier” as they massed in the Jadiriyah district of east Baghdad. Others chanted "Death to America”, while the Iraqi flag was widely flown.
Around 5,200 U.S. troops are still in Iraq. Earlier this month, the Iraqi parliament voted to expel all American forces in the country. U.S. President Donald Trump has refused to discuss the withdrawal with Iraq’s acting prime minister, Adel Abdul Mahdi and instead threatened to seize about $35 billion of Iraqi oil revenues held in a bank account in New York.
The massive rally on Friday came following a call from influential cleric Muqtada al-Sadr who had originally called for a "million-man march” to show Iraqi opposition to the U.S. presence in the country.
Sayed Sadiq al-Hashemi, the director of the Iraqi Center for Studies, said more than 2.5 million took part in the demonstrations.
Since the early hours, huge crowds of men, women and children of all ages converged on the Jadriyah neighborhood near Baghdad University.
Iraq’s Al-Ahd news network reported that Iraqis from all of the country’s provinces had gathered in the city.
Sadr issued a statement on Friday calling for U.S. bases to be shut down and Iraqi airspace closed to US warplanes and surveillance aircraft.
He warned that U.S. presence in the country will be dealt with as an occupying force if Washington does not agree with Iraqi demands to withdraw for the country.
In a message delivered through a representative at Friday prayer in the holy city of Karbala, top cleric Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani also urged Iraqi political groups to do what is needed to the safeguard the country’s sovereignty.
He called on Iraqi groups to stand united, far from any foreign influence in countering the dangers which threaten the country.
On Thursday ahead of the planned rallies, Sadr called on Iraqis to mobilize and defend the country’s independence and sovereignty.
"Oh women, men and youth of the country, the time is now upon us to defend the country, its sovereignty and dependence,” Sadr said in a tweet.
"Spread the word of an independent future Iraq that will be ruled by the righteous; an Iraq which will not know of corruption nor aggression” he added, calling on Iraqis to expel the "tyrants”.
Various Iraqi resistance groups affiliated with the country’s Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) backed the anti-American rally.
Speaking to the Lebanese Al-Mayadeen television channel, Jaafar al-Husseini, a spokesman for the PMU-affiliated Kata’ib Hezbollah resistance group, said "other means” will be used against the Americans if they do not leave Iraq.
The American presence, he said, has led to corruption and instability in the country.
Firas al-Yasser, a member of the

 political bureau of Iraq’s Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba, said Friday’s rallies marked "a new chapter” in the Arab country’s relations with the U.S.
"We believe we have reached the zero hour in facing off with the U.S.,” he said.
Qais al-Khazali, leader of Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq, which is also part of the PMU, described Friday’s rallies as a "second revolution” a century after the Great Iraqi Revolution of 1920 against British forces. The rally coincided with a report by the Middle East Eye that the U.S. was reportedly seeking to carve out a "Sunni state” in Iraq’s Anbar province in a bid to secure the presence of its military forces.
The plan was discussed at a secret meeting nine months ago between Saudi ambassador to Jordan and a group of Iraqi politicians and businessmen from Anbar, Salah al-Din and Nineveh provinces, the report said.
The meeting, which was held in Amman, was hosted by Saudi minister for Persian Gulf affairs, Thamer bin Sabhan al-Sabhan, who is Crown Prince Muhammad bin Salman’s point man for the region. On the agenda was a plan to push for a Sunni autonomous region, akin to Iraqi Kurdistan.
A bigger meeting was held some weeks later, this time attended by a U.S. and Israeli representative. The MEE has quoted the U.S. envoy as telling his Saudi counterpart: "If you can do it, it’s welcome.” A third meeting was held in Dubai, this time attended by Iraq’s Sunni Parliament speaker Mohamed al-Halbousi. He has denied that plans to create a Sunni region were discussed or agreed upon, but Sunni members of the Iraqi parliament have broken the cover, the report said.
Anbar comprises 31 percent of the Iraqi state’s landmass. It has significant untapped oil, gas and mineral reserves, bordering Syria.