Iraqis celebrated football win against Iran as symbolic victory

The highly-anticipated match, which ended in a 2-1 victory for Iraq, was an uplifting end to a day that began with four demonstrators killed as they were hit by tear gas canisters in Baghdad.

Many of the expatriate Iraqi fans who streamed into the football stadium in the Jordanian capital Amman were dressed in black to honour the dead protesters or donned the medical masks demonstrators wear to protect them against tear gas.

In Baghdad's Tahrir (Liberation) Square, the heart of the month-long grassroots movement that has claimed over 330 lives, activists watched the match on a giant screen after a day of clashes with riot police.