A child runs towards Mohamed Maarouf, 28, as he walks with a sack of gifts while dressed in Saint Nicholas (Santa Claus) costume in a slum near the centre of Iraq's southern city of Basra on December 24, 2021. (Photo by Hussein Faleh/AFP Photo)

A boy poses for a picture amid clashes between supporters of Shiite Muslim cleric Moqtada and Iraqi security forces in Tahrir Square in the centre of Iraq's capital Baghdad on September 28, 2022, during a parliament session in the nearby high-security Green Zone across the Tigris river. Three rockets were fired at Baghdad's Green Zone, wounding seven security force personnel as parliament was holding its first session in two months, Iraq's security forces said. The parliament, at the centre of a months-long political paralysis, met for the first since deadly unrest in August to vote on the resignation of its speaker. (Photo by Ahmad Al-Rubaye/AFP Photo)

Female Kurdish Peshmerga fighters affiliated with Iran's separatist Kurdistan Freedom Party (PAK), are pictured at a base in an undisclosed location in the Arbil province, the capital of the autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq, on December 1, 2022. Iranian-Kurdish rebel groups have for decades sought refuge in northern Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region, but they have recently come under fresh fire amid weeks of protests in the neighbouring Islamic republic. (Photo by Safin Hamed/AFP Photo)

Shiite Muslim devotees reach to receive a blessing from the tomb of Imam Hussein, the Prophet Mohammed's grandson, at the Imam's shrine in Iraq's central holy city of Karbala on September 6, 2023, during the Arbaeen religious festival commemorating his seventh century killing. (Photo by Hussein Faleh/AFP Photo)

An Iraqi camel herder poses in the desert of Samawa in Iraq's southern province of al-Muthanna on January 27, 2024. (Photo by Hussein Faleh/AFP Photo)

This aerial view shows youths swimming to cool off in the waters of Iraq's Euphrates river during a heatwave, in the district of al-Hindiyah east of Karbala on June 7, 2024. (Photo by Karar Jabbar/AFP Photo)

Pionneers from Aubagne's 1st Foreign Regiment (Legion etrangere) march the Champs-Elysees during the annual Bastille day parade on July 14, 2011 in Paris, France. The French National Day celebrates its revolution in the storming of the Bastille in 1789 through various parades and official ceremonies throughout France. (Photo by Franck Prevel/Getty Images)