Two demonstrators were killed in southern Iraq on Saturday as protests against unemployment spread to Karbala. Protests over poor government services and corruption, which had spread to the Shiite holy city, entered their sixth consecutive day in several cities in Iraqs southern provinces. The deaths overnight in Maysan province on the border with Iran brought to three the number of demonstrators killed since the protests erupted Sunday in neighboring Basra. A spokesman for the Maysan health authorities, Ahmad al-Kanani, said the pair died from gunshot wounds in the provincial capital Amarah. It was not clear who killed them but Kanani said there had been "indiscriminate gunfire" in the city. Dozens more have been wounded in the past week, including security forces, according to medical sources. Iraq placed its security forces on high alert on Saturday in response to the protests. The nationwide order was issued by Prime Minister Haidar al-Abadi, who also serves as the country’s commander in chief of the armed forces, in a directive seen by Reuters. Reinforcement troops from both the Counter Terrorism Service and the Army’s Ninth Division have already been dispatched to Basra, where demonstrators gathered, to help protect the province’s oil fields, security sources said. The unrest comes as Iraq struggles to rebuild after a devastating three-year war against ISIS, and with the country in political limbo following May elections. The demonstrations over unemployment, the rising cost of living and a lack of basic services escalated after a protester was killed by security forces on Sunday in Basra. Demonstrators set tires ablaze to block roads and tried to storm government installations. On Friday, Abadi flew to Basra from Brussels, where he had attended a NATO summit, to try to restore calm. After visiting Basra, the prime minister chaired a security cabinet in Baghdad, his office said in a statement accusing "infiltrators" of feeding on "peaceful protests to attack public and private property". "Our forces will take all the necessary measures to counter those people," the statement said. But even as Abadi met the governor of the oil-rich province and energy chiefs, protesters took to the streets of Basra city as well as other parts of the province and the unrest spread further afield. Overnight in Maysan, several protests were held outside the headquarters of various political parties -- including Abadis Dawa Party -- and some were set on fire, Iraqi media reported. A small protest also took place after midnight in the northern Baghdad district of Al-Shula amid a heavy deployment of security forces, a security source told AFP. On Saturday dozens of protesters rallied in different parts of Basra, including at the West Qurna and Majnoon oil fields west of the city, an AFP correspondent said. Protesters were gathered at Basras Umm Qasr port and outside the governors office in the center of the city. A group of demonstrators also staged a brief protest at the Safwan border crossing with neighboring Kuwait. On Friday hundreds of people holding Iraqi flags gathered outside the governors office in Basra while protests also took place in the provinces of Dhi Qar and Najaf. Shiite clerics, including Moqtada Sadr whose populist coalition triumphed in May elections, have backed the protesters but urged them to refrain from violence. Sadr has sought to form a broad coalition with rivals including Abadi, but the process has been complicated by the supreme court ordering manual recounts in areas where the election was disputed. Officially, 10.8 percent of Iraqis are jobless, while youth unemployment is twice as high in a country where 60 percent of the population are aged under 24.