URGENT: Iraqis protest possibility of American troops entering Iraq under pretext of fighting ISIS

(IraqiNews.com) On Saturday hundreds of supporters of the Sadrist movement, including government ministers, current members of parliament and former MPs, demonstrated this morning in Tahrir Square, the center of Baghdad, to protest against the prospect of the White House ordering American ground troops to Iraq to fight ISIS as US President Barack Obama said he plans to make his case against ISIS at the United Nations General Assembly next week in a bid for greater international support in the anti-ISIS fight.

An IraqiNews.com correspondent said that Sadrist demonstrators denounced international intervention in Iraq as “unacceptable” and “detrimental to the sovereignty of Iraq” and that “security forces and the Iraqi People are able to end the presence of ISIS.”

The correspondent said that the demonstrators denounced and strongly rejected what they perceived as “attempts of American military intervention in the territories of Iraq under the pretext of fighting ISIS,” explaining that “they raised the Iraqi flags and pictures of the cleric Moqtada al Sadr, burned the American flag and chanted slogans against their perceived intentions of the American and the international coalition. Also, they waved placards saying ‘NO, NO USA.'”