BAGHDAD: Iraqi powerful Shiite cleric Moqtada Al Sadr set conditions on Monday for his followers to hand over to the government the weapons they used to fight Daesh.

Iraqi Prime Minister Haider Al Abadi declared final victory over the militant Sunni group on Saturday and said “the state should have a monopoly on the use of arms”. Iraq’s armed forces held a victory parade in Baghdad on Sunday.

In a televised speech, Sadr demanded that his fighters, drawn largely from among the urban poor of Baghdad and southern Iraqi cities, be given jobs or be incorporated into the official armed and security forces.

He also demanded that the government “looks after the families of the martyrs” who fell during the three-year war against Daesh.

Al Sadr also called on his forces to hand some of the territory they control to other branches of Iraq’s security forces, but said his men would remain as protectors of a holy Shiite shrine in Samarra, north of Baghdad.

Sadr’s Saraya Al Salam, or Peace Brigades, are part of the mainly Shi’ite Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) formed in response to Daesh’s swift advance across Iraq in 2014. Iran has armed and trained many PMF groups but not his.

Al Sadr’s fighters took up arms against Daesh in the summer of 2014 after the fall of Mosul and are officially part of the government-sanctioned PMF.

Iran-backed ‘Harakat Hizbollah al Nujaba’, which has about 10,000 fighters and is one of the most important militias in Iraq, said last month it would give any heavy weapons it had to the military once Daesh was defeated.

Agencies