A US strike in Baghdad yesterday evening killed a pro-Iran military commander, the Pentagon has confirmed that with Al-Hashed al-Shaabi ex-paramilitaries revealing that it hit one of their headquarters.
An Iraqi security official disclosed that two people were seen dead and seven wounded in the drone strike, which the government dubbed a “blatant aggression”.
However, Pentagon spokesman Major General Pat Ryder disagreed insisting that the strike was an act of self-defence against a commander who was actively planning attacks against US personnel.
“It is important to note that the strike was taken in self-defence, that no civilians were harmed and that no infrastructure or facilities were struck,” Ryder told journalists in Washington.
The strike targeted a leader of Harakat al-Nujaba who was “actively involved in planning and carrying out attacks against American personnel,” according to Ryder, who said it also killed another of the group’s members.
Africa Today News, New York reports that the attack and the toll, confirmed by a Hashed source who asked not to be named, came as tension mounted in the region amid the Israel-Hamas war raging in the Gaza Strip.
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The Hashed al-Shaabi are mainly pro-Iranian former paramilitary units who had battled Sunni Muslim jihadists and who are now integrated into the Iraqi armed forces.
Harakat al-Nujaba, one of the Hashed’s factions, said that “the deputy commander of operations for Baghdad, Mushtaq Talib al-Saidi”, had been “martyred in a US strike”.
Videos shared on a Telegram channel linked to the Hashed showed columns of smoke rising above the area of the strike on Baghdad’s Palestine Street, normally a bustling commercial road.
The site was cordoned off by Hashed forces, who blocked journalists’ access to the site, an AFP photographer said.
The strike came after a spate of attacks on US forces in Iraq and neighbouring Syria since the start of the Gaza war. Washington says there have been more than 100 since mid-October.
Many have been claimed by the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, a loose alliance of Iran-linked armed groups that oppose US support for Israel in the Gaza war.
The United States has around 2,500 troops in Iraq and 900 in Syria as part of the multinational coalition fighting the Islamic State group since 2014.
The US military has responded to recent attacks by launching air strikes targeting sites used by Iran and its proxy forces in Iraq and Syria, including Hashed sites.
Thursday’s strike was denounced by Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani as “a dangerous escalation and assault”, according to his office.
“The Iraqi armed forces hold the global coalition forces responsible for this unwarranted attack,” a spokesperson for Sudani said in a statement.
Pro-Iran parties dominate Iraq’s parliament, and won the majority of council seats in most of the country’s provinces following provincial council elections held in December.