Thousands of walls have been removed from area, which is now open ‘without exceptions’

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone has reopened to the public after 16 years.

Maj Gen Jassim Yahya Abd Ali said the area, which houses the US embassy and Iraqi government offices, was now open “24 hours a day without any exceptions or conditions”. He said authorities had removed 12,000 concrete walls from the area.

Atheir Assem, 25, who drove inside the Green Zone for the first time on Tuesday, said: “I feel that Baghdad is bigger than before.”

He said his generation knew nothing about the Green Zone and had felt that the people there lived in another country. “Now there is no difference and this is beautiful,” he said.

The zone, measuring 4 sq miles, has been off limits to the public since the 2003 US invasion of Iraq.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Workers removing concrete blast walls in the Green Zone last week. Photograph: Ali Abdul Hassan/AP

Before the war it was home to Saddam Hussein’s palaces. It became known as Little America after it was seized by US military forces, and in later years it became a hated symbol of the country’s inequality, fuelling perceptions among Iraqis that their government was out of touch.

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Only Iraqis with special security badges could enter the area. Various attempts and promises by the Iraqi government to open the zone to traffic failed to bear fruit because of persistent security concerns.

The government began easing restrictions in the area this year. The prime minister, Adel Abdul-Mahdi, said the Green Zone would be fully open to the public on Eid al-Fitr, the holiday that marks the end of Ramadan.

Abdullah Mouhamed, a taxi driver, said: “Thank god the opening of the Green Zone happened during the Eid. It is a very good initiative and will ease transportation in Baghdad.”