Iraqi police fire live shots, tear gas at Baghdad protesters

At least two demonstrators died in Baghdad on Friday, the Iraqi Human Rights Commission said, as anti-government protests resumed following the deaths of dozens earlier this month.

Commission member Ali Bayati said both demonstrators appeared to have died from wounds sustained when they were hit by tear gas canisters. Nearly 100 people were wounded.

The confrontations began early in the morning. The protests began on Oct. 1 over corruption, unemployment and lack of basic services but quickly turned deadly as security forces cracked down, using live ammunition for days.

The protests then spread to several, mainly Shiite-populated southern provinces and authorities imposed a curfew and shut down the internet for days in an effort to quell the unrest.

After a week of violence in the capital and the country's southern provinces, a government-appointed inquiry into the protests determined that security forces had used excessive force, killing 149 people and wounding over 3,000. Eight members of the security forces were also killed.

The protests, unprecedented in their scale, threatened to plunge Iraq into a new cycle of instability that potentially could be the most dangerous this conflict-scarred nation has faced, barely two years after declaring victory over the Daesh group.