SULAIMANIYA, Iraq (AP) — The police opened fire Sunday on stone-throwing crowds protesting government corruption in Iraq’s northern Kurdish region, and seven people were struck by gunfire, according to a doctor here. Another 28 were injured by rocks or hospitalized with breathing problems caused by tear gas, the doctor said.

It was the latest protest to turn violent in Sulaimaniya, 160 miles northeast of Baghdad in the normally peaceful Kurdish region, where demonstrations calling for political and economic reforms have been held nearly every day during the last several months.

Some police officers fired into the air to clear protesters blocking a road, witnesses said, and others shot into the crowd. Two local journalists were among the seven people who were shot, said the doctor, Sulaimaniya’s health director, Dr. Regald Hama Rasheed. No deaths were immediately reported.

At least nine protesters have been killed since Feb. 17 in antigovernment demonstrations in the semiautonomous Kurdish region. The demonstrations appear to have been inspired by the other flashes of unrest across the Middle East and North Africa.