Protesters have stormed the Iranian consulate in the Iraqi city of Najaf and set fire to the entire building, authorities said. Police reportedly fired live rounds into the crowd but failed to prevent the breach.

Anti-government protesters took to the streets after authorities lifted a two-day round-the-clock curfew. Dozens of people have been killed after four days of mass protests in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities.

Crisis-ridden Iraq has been plagued by violent protests that have left dozens dead. Anger over living conditions in the country shows no sign of abating, but what exactly is fueling it?

Ripe for revolution? Iraq street protests defy political status quo

More than a dozen people were killed and hundreds injured when Iraqi security officials "opened fire on protesters" overnight, according to reports. Anti-government protests have entered their fifth day across Iraq.

Hundreds of people took to the streets in different parts of Iraq to demand more basic services and to protest corruption and unemployment, a situation that in Baghdad devolved into a pitched battle between security forces and demonstrators that left one protester dead and some 200 people injured.

The Islamic State's war in Iraq also paralyzed the Kurdish region even though it was largely spared from the fighting. Now the economy there is recovering from the disruption.

The table running across Samya Khasro's living room wall is a shrine to the missing: flickering candles and fading photographs of her 26 Iraqi relatives who vanished 35 years ago. Iraq is one of the countries with the highest number of missing or disappeared persons, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), with numbers ranging between 250,000 and well over a million.

Turkish warplanes have struck a mountainous region near the Iraq-Iran border, where a Kurdish separatist group is known to operate. Ankara blames them for Wednesday's killing of a Turkish diplomat in Erbil.

UNESCO adds the sprawling Mesopotamian city of Babylon to its World Heritage List, boosting Iraq's hopes of revived tourism nearly two years after jihadists ravaged other celebrated sites. Iraq had been trying since 1983 to have the site -- a massive 10-square-kilometre complex of which just 18% has been excavated thus far -- recognised by UNESCO.

In a Vatican audience, the pope reiterated his desire to visit Baghdad, despite security concerns. He also called out Western hypocrisy for claiming to promote peace while selling weapons abroad.

After war and terror, Iraq plagued by drug crisis.