The killings take place in public and are captured on surveillance footage. Those videos are then watched by millions. But even if the gunmen are identified, no one is prosecuted, and the cycle starts again. Across Baghdad and southern Iraq, a rising tide of attacks on activists and journalists is alarming what remains of a protest movement that has demanded the ouster of Iraq’s U.S.-molded political system and the usually Iran-linked armed groups that prop it up.

Mass street demonstrations were crushed last year with deadly force, often by paramilitary groups that the protesters have denounced. Now as some activists prepare to run in elections, prominent figures in the protest movement are being picked off while they walk the streets or drive home at the end of the day.

The assassinations, officials and human rights monitors say, underscore the reach of Iraq’s militia network — to punish citizens who dare to criticize it and control a political system meant to hold it accountable.

Less than 24 hours later, news of another attack rippled through social media: This time the victim was in surgery after surviving a bullet to the head and shoulder. A photo posted to social media Tuesday morning showed journalist Ahmed Hasan lying in a hospital bed, his eyes closed and an oxygen mask on his face.

“It’s a message to us all,” said another Karbala-based activist, Saeed Askar, reached by phone after scrambling to move his family to another city overnight. “No matter what we do, the situation will always remain the same. Those death squads will always be in power.”

Iraq is experiencing a period of relative stability after decades when conflict repeatedly left ­civilians caught in the middle. In 2019, an anti-government protest movement occupied parts of Baghdad and southern cities for months as a generation raised in the shadow of the 2003 U.S.-led invasion decried the corrupt political system it had installed, as well as the influence of neighboring Iran.