Iraqi cleric Moqtada al-Sadr told his followers to leave their protests in central Baghdad on Tuesday and apologised to the Iraqi people after nearly two days of violent clashes between rival Shi'ite Muslim groups.
"This is not a revolutionary (anymore) because it has lost its peaceful character," Sadr said in a televised address. "The spilling of Iraqi blood is forbidden," he added.
Sadr gave followers "60 minutes" to withdraw from the high-security Green Zone, after which he would threatened to "disavow" those who remained.
"I apologise to the Iraqi people, the only ones affected by the events," Sadr told reporters from his base in the central Iraqi city of Najaf.
Supporters of Iraq's powerful cleric Moqtada Sadr started to withdraw from Baghdad's Green Zone on Tuesday after he urged them to end a protest following violence that killed 23 of them.
Iraqi security forces lifted a nation-wide curfew, the state news agency reported, after powerful Shi'ite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr called on his supporters to withdraw from the streets.
