Of the 31 people killed in demonstrations since Tuesday, more than half of them have died in the rural province roughly 300 kilometres (200 miles) south of Baghdad.

Most of the fatalities were in the regional capital Nasiriyah, which has been gripped by ferocious protests against the capital's ruling political elite.

"This is the city of revolutions and uprisings, up until today," said Amir Douchi, a Nasiriyah native and political commentator.

Indeed, the Sumerian city of Larsa broke away from other major cities and developed its own dynasty around 4,000 years ago.

Arab tribesmen then fought against Persian forces there in the early seventh century, and in the 1920s, it sought to rise up against British rule before the Iraqi Communist Party established one of its first branches there.

Three decades later, a coup toppled the monarchy and brought the Baath Party to power -- counting Dhi Qar native Fuad al-Rikabi among its founders.

In 1991, Nasiriyah joined the mass uprising against Baghdad that was ultimately brutally suppressed by dictator Saddam Hussein.

Another son of Dhi Qar helped found the Daawa party, a fierce opponent of the Baathist regime for decades and which came to rule when Saddam was deposed in 2003.

This tumultuous history, said Nasiriyah academic Hamed al-Chatri, has "created a powerful narrative among inhabitants that has translated into several uprisings".

"Dhi Qar has always reacted against injustice," Chatri told AFP.

The same goes for this week's protests, residents said.

"Even if we lose people, we will keep this movement up until our demands are met," said Majid al-Osmi, a 45-year-old from Dhi Qar who has been protesting.

"I've been protesting for ten years and will keep doing so until the regime falls. It will breathe its last," he said.

This week, protests over unemployment and corruption erupted in Baghdad and quickly spread to the south, including Dhi Qar, where more than 40 percent of the population lives under the poverty line.

The trigger for protests appeared to be anger over youth unemployment, but Dhi Qar and other southern provinces have long accused the central government of ignoring their pleas for better infrastructure.

"Poverty and unemployment have kept rising, and the government only has promises - not a single solution," said Radhi al-Maarouf, a Communist Party member in Nasiriyah.

That's why, he told AFP, young people have been braving riot police, water cannons, tear gas and live rounds.

"They have been dying a slow death, and a bullet is better than that," he said.