Teachers clash with Iraqi security forces in protests over unpaid salaries

Teachers and activists clashed with security forces in a city in Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region on Saturday during a protest over unpaid salaries.

More than 5,000 people had gathered in front of the education ministry building in Sulaimaniyah and marched to the headquarters of the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), the dominant party in the south of the Kurdish region.

"Where are the employees' salaries, you corrupt government," the protesters chanted in the city, which is administered by the autonomous Kurdish Regional Government.

"Where is the oil income going," they also asked, accusing both the PUK and the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Kurdish leader Massud Barzani of involvement in graft.

"I don't trust the government when it says the region is suffering from a financial crisis," said Sara Rahim, a 40-year-old teacher who has not been paid in months.

Organisers told AFP that teachers would protest again on Sunday and remain on strike until their salaries were paid and their demands met.

Civil servants in Kurdistan have been on strike intermittently since 2015, when salaries stopped being paid on time as the region was hit hard by the cost of the war against IS and plummeting oil prices.

Three policemen killed

Meanwhile, three members of the Iraqi security forces were killed on Saturday when an Islamic State group truck bomb they were trying to defuse exploded west of Baghdad, police officials said.

A large truck packed with explosives was intercepted by security forces in the Tamim neighbourhood of Ramadi, the main city in Iraq's vast western province of Anbar.

"Three members of the police's disposal team, one of them a lieutenant colonel, were killed and the head of the squad was wounded, as they tried to defuse the truck," said a police lieutenant colonel.

Iraq's interior ministry spokesman said the driver was arrested.

Security forces retook Ramadi from IS militats early this year and recaptured Fallujah, which lies closer to Baghdad in the Euphrates Valley, in June.

While anti-IS forces have now retaken much of the sprawling province, which has borders with Syria, Jordan and Saudi Arabia, the militants have been harassing security forces regularly.