After eight people were killed during the day on Monday, security forces shot dead at least five others overnight or early on Tuesday, including one killed with live fire toward a funeral procession held for another who died hours earlier, security and medical sources told Reuters.
More than 260 Iraqis have been killed in demonstrations since the start of October against a government they see as corrupt and beholden to foreign interests, above all Iran.
Most of those deaths occurred during the first week of the demonstrations, when snipers shot into crowds from Baghdad rooftops. But after the government appeared to have curbed the use of some deadly tactics, the protests swelled rapidly over the past 12 days.
The new violence flared a day after Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi appealed to protesters to suspend their movement, which he said had achieved its goals and was hurting the economy.
He has said he is willing to resign if politicians agree on a replacement and has vowed a number of reforms. But protesters say that is not enough and the entire political class needs to go.
"After the first wave of protests, we gave the government until Oct. 25 to enact reforms," a 30-year-old protester, who declined to give his name out of safety concerns, said in Baghdad. "It has failed to do so, (and) all of its proposed reforms were just routine, the same old stuff."
He said the use of deadly force against protesters had radicalized protesters who initially only wanted "constitutional and legal reforms." Now they wanted wholesale change.