BAGHDAD — After a day of sleeping and praying in the Green Zone, the government citadel historically off limits to ordinary Iraqis, protesters began leaving Sunday evening on orders from the man who had sent them: Moqtada al-Sadr, the influential Shi’ite cleric.
In a statement issued from the holy city of Najaf in southern Iraq, Sadr directed his followers to leave the Green Zone in an orderly fashion, to chant for Iraq and not a sect, and to help clean the space they had occupied.
A day earlier, hundreds of protesters demanding an end to corruption stormed the fortified Green Zone in dramatic scenes that hinted at revolution. Protesters attacked security forces and lawmakers and damaged state property.
But by Sunday evening the episode had become something less: an affirmation of Sadr’s sway over the street but one aimed at pressuring the government to enact promised reforms rather than bringing it down.
The question in the days ahead is whether Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi, who is a Shi’ite, and the rest of Iraq’s ruling elite can come together to form a new Cabinet of capable ministers and not loyalists to a party or sect, something that Sadr has demanded and Abadi has promised.
Since announcing last summer a set of measures to improve governance, Abadi has been thwarted repeatedly by parties and politicians who have long depended on Iraq’s system of patronage. They include the previous prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki.
As the attention on Sunday remained on the political situation in Baghdad, the Islamic State carried out two devastating suicide bombings in the southern Iraqi city of Samawa.
The attacks killed at least 37 people and wounded nearly 90, according to police officials and the provincial governor’s office.
A police officer said two parked cars filled with explosives were detonated within minutes of each other around midday, the first near government offices and the second at an open-air bus station less than a mile away.
The Islamic State claimed the bombings in an online statement.
Also on Sunday, the United Nations released monthly casualty statistics, reporting that 741 Iraqis were killed in terrorist acts and in fighting against the Islamic State in April.
The figures were a decline from March, when 1,119 Iraqis were killed, but the United Nations office in Baghdad said difficulties in compiling the data suggested that the April totals were the “absolute minimum.’’
The Shi’ite protests, which had been percolating for weeks and culminated on Saturday with the breaching of the Green Zone walls, were organized as a show of support for the promised government changes.
On Sunday, Abadi’s office distributed photographs of the prime minister surveying the damage in the hall of Parliament, surrounded by broken glass and damaged furniture. A statement also said the prime minister had ordered the arrests of those who had attacked lawmakers or damaged property.
Later, Abadi met with President Fouad Massoum and Salim al-Jubouri, the speaker of Parliament. In a joint statement, the leaders said they condemned the storming of Parliament and promised to continue meeting over the next days to “assure progress in reforming the political process.’’
In his statement, Sadr demanded that Parliament meet soon and approve a new Cabinet. If not, he said, he will push for the disbanding of the government and call for early elections.
Sadr said the departure of his followers from the Green Zone had been done out of “respect’’ for a Shi’ite pilgrimage underway, and he vowed that they will return to the streets on Friday, typically the day of protest in Iraq.
Inside the Green Zone on Sunday, protesters who had spent the night in an area called Celebration Square, once a parade ground for Saddam Hussein, seemed to luxuriate in having reached a space long forbidden to them. For many it is a place that has symbolized corruption and dysfunction.
Many of the demonstrators, who had gathered near the US Embassy, said they hoped to galvanize a movement that would dismantle the political system and its sectarian quotas, which they blamed the United States for establishing more than a decade ago.
Talib Mohammed, an amputee in a wheelchair who said he had lost his leg in a battle against the United States last decade, said he was demanding his rights “from the Americans and all who stole from the people and became millionaires.’’
The US Embassy issued a statement that expressed concern about the sit-in but said all Iraqis should work to “move the political and economic reform process forward’’ while combating the other threat to the country, the Islamic State.
While recognizing the right of peaceful protest, the embassy said, it joined others in “urging restraint and respect for constitutional institutions and respect for the rights of others.’’
Although the crisis seemed to be defused for the moment, Iraq’s political system is in disarray. Lawmakers, some of them caught up in the occupation, expressed pessimism.
Haitham al-Jibouri, a Shi’ite member of Parliament, said, “This crisis will break the country instead of fixing it.’’ He called for Abadi’s resignation and said “a new government must be formed.’’
