September-7-2018

His Excellency Prime Minister, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces Dr. Haider al-Abadi has chaired, on Friday, a meeting of the Ministerial Council for National Security.

The meeting was devoted to discussing the situation of services and security in Basra, emphasizing on the right to peaceful demonstration of citizens and the State is keen to protect them and the task of our security forces is to provide protection to citizens, And not to allow attacks on public and private property, while rejecting any calls for the use of force against demonstrators because our forces cannot be against the citizens, and this is demonstrated by the cohesion between security forces and demonstrators.

The Council has pointed out to the importance of the removal of political conflicts from Basra and the rejection of political exploitation of the right's demands of citizens in the province and called on the political parties not to use the security file in the political competition.

The Council has called upon the people of Basra to preserve public and private property and to deport those who want to harm the province and what the people of Basra want from services, security stability and to provide job opportunities which the federal government works in coordination with the rest of the authorities to provide them.

The Council follows up the investigation ordered by the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces with regard to the presence of civilian and military casualties in Basra and to reach results as soon as possible.

The Council has reiterated that the efforts of the security, military and intelligence forces continue to pursue Daesh terrorist's cells and the intelligence effort continues to track the terrorists and achieve great successes that led to stability in the capital and other cities, warning that terrorism exploits political differences and chaos to carry out terrorist acts.

Media office of the prime minister
September-7- 2018