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The protests have been driven by anger over political corruption, unemployment and Iranian influence in Iraqi politics. The protests forced Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi to resign last month, and the government has struggled to respond to the protesters’ demands.

The lynching victim, identified as Haitham Ali Ismael, had been berating protesters for three days for obstructing the street beside his house and making noise, but he had been largely ignored. On Thursday, witnesses said, he climbed onto the roof of his house and began shooting into the air with a pistol.

The protesters, apparently under the impression that he had killed someone, stormed his house, joined by a large number of unemployed people and children who looked as if they were barely adolescents. In video of the attack, the crowd can be heard chanting, “The blood of the martyrs will not be spilled in vain,” suggesting that they believed he had killed one or more protesters.

The crowd barged into the small house at the edge of Al Wathba Square, where Mr. Ismael lived with his mother, and began stabbing him. The protesters took him outside, pulling off his clothes and dragging him bleeding through the streets.

“I was standing there when they hung this young man by a rope and tied him to the pole,” said Fadhil Muhammad, 25, a tuk-tuk driver. “Then the rope was cut and the victim’s head fell on screws on the ground in the street and they entered into his head.”