Nine people were killed and 47 were injured Thursday when hundreds of protesters clashed with security forces in Sulaimaniya, a city in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq, according to Dr. Raykot Hamed Salih, a health official there.
Dozens of protesters attacked the Kurdistan Democratic Party headquarters in the city and destroyed furniture and computers inside the building, police officials in Sulaimaniya told CNN.
Witnesses told CNN that a number of Kurdish security forces, known as peshmerga, opened fire to disperse the protesters.
The demonstrators were angry about corruption, the quality of basic services and unemployment, Salih said.
The Kurdistan Democratic Party is headed by the Kurdistan region's president, Massoud Barzani, an important power broker in the region.
