BAGHDAD, Sept. 3 (Xinhua) -- Iraqi authorities on Sunday lifted a curfew imposed the day before in the ethnically mixed city of Kirkuk in northern Iraq after calm was restored there.
Saturday's protests and clashes in Kirkuk involving Kurds, Arabs, and Turkmens killed three and injured 20, including several security members, Saad al-Baiyati, an officer from Kirkuk provincial police, told Xinhua.
"The security situation in the province is now stable, while security forces are deployed heavily in the main streets and intersections in case of any emergency," al-Baiyati said, adding that the Arab and Turkmen protestors removed their sit-in tents and opened the main road between Kirkuk and Erbil, the capital of the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region.
The Arabs and Turkmens have been protesting over the past few days against the planned return of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP). They blocked streets, set tires on fire, and staged a sit-in outside the building to prevent the return of the KDP to its former headquarters, which is now occupied by the Iraqi Joint Operations Command, in the namesake provincial capital Kirkuk, some 250 km north of Baghdad.
Saturday's clashes erupted when protestors from Kurds affiliated with the KDP held a demonstration and attacked the sit-in tents of the Arabs and Turkmens in front of the headquarters.
The clashes are the latest in a series of tensions between the Kurds, Arabs, and Turkmens in Kirkuk, a city located in an oil-rich region that is claimed by both the Kurdistan region and the central government in Baghdad. ■
