The US military ordered a drone strike on the leader of an Iraqi militia group based in Baghdad that it blames for recent attacks on American forces stationed in the country as regional hostilities continue to flare up following Hamas’s atrocities on October 7 in Israel.
The targeted strike killed the military leader and another person, a US official told Reuters on Thursday.
The US official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the strike hit a vehicle in Baghdad. It targeted a leader of Harakat al Nujaba, the official said, without naming the person.
Earlier Thursday, the Popular Mobilization Force (PMF) said that the strike in Baghdad had killed a military commander of the ex-paramilitary force, with an Iraq security official reporting two deaths in a drone attack.
“A drone targeted the logistical support headquarters of PMF,” mainly pro-Iranian former paramilitary units integrated into the Iraqi armed forces, said the security official.
The strike killed “two members and wounded seven others”, said the official, speaking on condition of anonymity.
A PMF source, also asking not to be named, confirmed the death toll and held the United States responsible for the attack.
Harakat al-Nujaba, one of the PMF’s factions, said in a statement that “the deputy commander of operations for Baghdad, Mushtaq Talib al-Saidi” had been “martyred in a US strike”.
There was no immediate comment from US officials, whose forces in Iraq and neighbouring Syria have faced a spate of attacks since the start of the Israel-Hamas war.
Videos on X, formerly known as Twitter, appear to showed columns of black smoke rising above the area of the strike on the PMF headquarters in Baghdad’s Palestine Street, a bustling commercial hub.
Iraq’s Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani said in a statement that the US-led international coalition bears responsibility for the “unjustified” attack on an Iraqi security force.
It comes after President Joe Biden ordered retaliatory airstrikes against Iranian-backed militia groups after three US service members were injured in a drone attack in northern Iraq on December 26.
National Security Council spokesperson Adrienne Watson said one of the US troops suffered critical injuries in the attack.
The Iranian-backed militia Kataib Hezbollah and affiliated groups, under an umbrella of Iranian-backed militants, claimed credit for the attack that utilised a one-way attack drone.
Iraqi officials said that US strikes targeting militia sites killed one militant and wounded 18. They came at a time of heightened fears of a regional spillover of the Israel-Hamas war.
Meanwhile, two bombs exploded and killed at least 84 people at a commemoration for a prominent Iranian general slain by the US in a 2020 drone strike, Iranian officials said on Monday.
No one immediately claimed responsibility for what appeared to be the deadliest militant attack to target Iran since its 1979 Islamic Revolution. Iran’s leaders vowed to punish those responsible for the blasts, which wounded at least 284 people.
The explosions struck minutes apart on Wednesday, shaking the city of Kerman, about 820 kilometers (510 miles) southeast of the capital, Tehran. The second blast sprayed shrapnel into a screaming crowd fleeing the first explosion.
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