A supporter of Iraqi anti-government demonstrators was gunned down in Baghdad, a police source said Sunday, the fourth backer of the protest movement to be killed in two weeks.

Mohammed al-Doujaili, 24, was shot in the back near the Tahrir Square protest hub on Saturday night, the police source said.

Another man who was with him was wounded in the same attack, and al-Doujaili died of his wounds at a Baghdad hospital Sunday morning, relatives said.

Doujaili, who helped distribute food to protesters encamped in Tahrir Square, was buried in Baghdad's Shiite-dominated district of Sadr City.

He is the fourth protester to be killed by unidentified assailants over the past two weeks.

Father of five Ali al-Lami was shot and killed by several bullets to the head earlier this week and prominent civil society activist Fahem al-Tai was killed in a drive-by shooting in Iraq's shrine city of Karbala.

In one particularly gruesome case, the bruised body of 19-year-old Zahra Ali was found on December 2 outside her family home in Baghdad, hours after she had gone missing.

Iraq's capital and its Shiite-majority south have been gripped by more than two months of rallies against corruption, poor public services and a lack of jobs.

Around 460 people have been killed and 25,000 wounded, most of them protesters, since the youth-led rallies erupted on October 1.

Since then demonstrators in the capital and southern cities have disappeared almost daily, in most cases taken from near their homes as they returned from protests.

Protesters accuse pro-Iran armed factions of playing a role in the killings and abductions.

London-based rights group Amnesty International on Friday urged Baghdad to clamp down on what it called a "campaign of terror targeting protesters".

Demonstrations once again took place on Sunday in Baghdad and across the south of Iraq, where schools and public administrations remained closed, AFP correspondents said.

Inked at the uprising: Iraq's teenage tattoo artist
Baghdad (AFP) Dec 15, 2019 - At 16, Maram is as old as the political system she and fellow Iraqi youth are railing against. But the spunky teen has her own way of protesting: inking tattoos.

In the blue-tinged light inside a tarp tent, the petite teenager carefully moves her mechanised tattoo pen across the left shoulder of her skinny teenage friend.

It's a sketch of Baghdad's Freedom Monument - a huge stone and bronze slab charting Iraq's path to a republic on Tahrir Square, the beating heart of Iraq's anti-government protests.

Its centrepiece is a dark figure with arms outstretched, wrenching apart a barrier.

"I like to break down barriers," Maram Uday says, after filling in the miniature black version on her friend's bare shoulder.

"It's not easy for people to accept this. Girls who tattoo typically work only in salons and on other girls," says Maram, who wears thick black eyeliner and a short, dramatic bob.

"But I decided to leave behind the traditional because change is necessary."

The fine arts student and amateur model began tattooing eight months ago as a way to make some extra money.

She joined the protests against government corruption and a lack of jobs in October and was so moved she drew a permanent memento on her left wrist.

It reads "OCT 25," the date a second, continuous wave of demonstrations erupted in Baghdad and Iraq's Shiite-majority south.

- 'Plenty of memories' -

Inspired, friends started lining up to get their own commemorative body art, which Maram draws for free.

"There are people who decided to donate medicine or clothes, I decided to donate this," she tells AFP.

She has drawn at least 15 protest-related tattoos, including "October 25," the Freedom Monument, and a gas mask of the type protesters use to protect themselves from volleys of tear gas canisters fired by security forces.

Youth make up around 60 percent of Iraq's 40 million people -- and about 100 percent of Maram's clients.

She comes to Tahrir every morning with her portable tattoo kit, usually with a list of appointments booked through her Instagram page, which has over 80,000 followers.

Hashem, 18, lifts his pale yellow shirt to show AFP the small gas mask tattoo he got on his right hip just a week ago -- his first tattoo.

"We have plenty of memories ... so I wanted to get a tattoo of it," he says.

He has been in Tahrir for weeks and professes revolutionary rhetoric -- but is still, at the end of the day, a teen.

"I couldn't get one on my hand because my parents wouldn't accept it," he says sheepishly.

- 'A tattoo to remember' -

The youth-dominated movement is unprecedented both for its spontaneity and resilience -- but also for the violence with which it has been met.

Around 460 people have died and 20,000 have been wounded, and all around Tahrir, small memorials have sprung up to commemorate them -- murals bearing victims' names or small stands with personalised candles.

Maram's newest client, a 19-year-old who identified himself as "Crush", wanted a more permanent reminder of those who have given their lives.

"I got it as a memento for my friends who died and were kidnapped," says Crush, gesturing to the fresh Freedom Monument on his shoulder.

At 23, Mushtaq Taleb from the southern port city of Basra already sports more than a half-dozen tattoos on his arms.

His latest, on his right shoulder, is a compound image: the date of the uprising, a map of Iraq, and the Freedom Monument melting into two hands joined together in a stylised shape of a fist.

"This tattoo represents the fact that the October 25 revolution erased something huge that the 16 past years couldn't erase: sectarianism," says Taleb.

Among the Shiite-majority protesters on Tahrir are Sunni residents of other provinces and minority Christians, too -- a large tent just a few doors down is adorned with pictures of Jesus.

"I had to get this tattoo to remember," he tells AFP.

"Tomorrow, the next day, the next year, when we grow up, people will ask us, what's that tattoo? What happened? We have to explain what took place in this revolution."

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Iraqi families fear worst after protesters abducted
Baghdad (AFP) Dec 11, 2019
"Last seen: Friday, 9:18pm." About an hour after gunmen began attacking a protest encampment in Iraq's capital at the weekend, Mustafa - who had slept there for weeks - went offline. In the days since, the 20-year-old demonstrator has not reappeared on messaging application WhatsApp, or in real life. Late Friday, unidentified gunmen stormed and torched the multi-storey building known as al-Sinek Garage, where anti-government protesters had camped out for weeks. At least 20 protesters and ... read more