As temperatures in Iraq climbed this week over 120 degrees Fahrenheit, thousands of people took to the streets across the country to protest dangerous power cuts, clean water shortages, poor living conditions—and the government corruption and theft they say is to blame.

Prominent media personalities and academics put out the call for a Friday mobilization in Baghdad’s Tahrir Square, and thousands took heed, marching, carrying signs, and at one point shutting down traffic in the Iraqi capital.

“Young people, thirsty for an opportunity to gather outside the rhetoric of political parties, and their sectarian criminal agenda, rushed to the city’s main square to demand better living conditions, chanting, ‘In the name of religion, the thieves robbed us,” Ahmed Habib,  editor for the Iraqi digital magazine shakomako.net, told Common Dreams.

Protests continue to spread throughout Iraq’s south, with hundreds marching through the cities of Basra and Karbala and more demonstrations slated for Sunday in Babil.

“We have started this protest and will continue until services are improved, especially electricity,” Abdelhalim Yasser, an activist and march organizer n Karbala, told Agence France-Presse. “If this political class failed to improve the situation in 12 years, then they should resign, because we are running out of patience.”