Hundreds of protesters blocked Iraq’s main highway Thursday to demand strikes against a town from which ISIS launched a chemical attack.
Seventeen residents of the town of Taza were being treated following a rocket attack launched Wednesday from Bashir, south of the city of Kirkuk, medical sources said.
Kurdish peshmerga forces and Shiite militias are deployed in the area but a military push to flush out ISIS extremists from some pockets has not materialized.
“30,000 people in Taza are under daily shelling and the government is silent,” read a banner carried by one of the protesters blocking the road between Baghdad and Kirkuk.
“We demand Iraqi air force strikes on Bashir,” chanted some people in the angry crowd.
According to Taza mayor Hussein Abbas, the town was struck by around 45 rockets over a period of three hours.