Iraqi MP’s ‘celebratory gunfire’ video sparks anger

A video of an Iraqi Parliament member firing into the air has sparked anger after stray bullets from celebratory New Year gunfire killed a teenage girl. A further 170 people were either injured by guns or suffered burns from fireworks on New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day in the Iraqi capital, medical and police sources were quoted by Arab News yesterday.

Public anger over the number of people hurt was already high when a video circulated on social media late on Tuesday evening, showing Wihdah Al Jumaili, an MP sitting in her car next to the driver and firing several shots into the air from a Beretta handgun. Jumaili said she was celebrating the marriage of a friend’s son when the shots were fired.

She wrote on Facebook that she shot in the air as “part of tribal practices adopted by tribes in Ramadi,” the capital of the Sunni-dominated Anbar province. But the video shows her car by the side of a highway in Baghdad’s Dorra district. Shooting in the air is considered an offence under Iraqi law, and punishments range from between one and three years in prison.

Thousands of Iraqi Facebook and Twitter users expressed their anger at Jumaili, and demanded she be stripped of her MP’s immunity to face prosecution.