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The June 8 strike targeted a military storage bunker near Nasiriyah, a desert village north of Damascus, and two additional sites near Homs.

Al-Zayer ran on the list for the Imtidad Movement, drawn from the protest movement, and got more than 22,000 votes in the southern province of Nasiriyah, a flashpoint in the demonstrations.

The Sadrists are the dominant force in the Health Ministry, and this summer, Sadr briefly withdrew from the election campaign amid a public uproar after a pair of hospital fires in Baghdad and the southern city of Nasiriyah incinerated two wards of coronavirus patients.

Still, the new law paved the way for parties drawn from the protests to emerge, such as the Imtidad Movement, which is expected to do well in the southern province of Nasiriyah, a flashpoint in the demonstrations.

“After both infernos, when I’m on call I numb myself because every hospital in Iraq is at high risk of burning down every single moment. So what can I do? I can’t quit my job. I can’t avoid the call,” said Hadeel al-Ashabl, a doctor in Baghdad who works in a new isolation ward similar to the one in Nasiriyah.