Feb 8, 2024. Posted by Balkan Periscope - Hellas
The US Defense Department (Pentagon) confirmed
that American forces carried out a drone strike on the Iraqi capital Baghdad on
Wednesday night, killing a senior resistance commander, according to American
media reports.
The reports cited the Pentagon as saying that a member of Kata’ib Hezbollah (a group part of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces), who was behind last month’s attack on a US military base in Jordan, was killed in the drone strike.
A US official said American intelligence had
been tracking him for some times,
following up on President Joe Biden’s promise that the response to the
base attack would continue.
Videos from the scene showed the charred
wreckage of a vehicle in a neighborhood of eastern Baghdad, and a nearby fire.
Iraqi security sources and media reports have
also confirmed the attack, saying three people were killed after the American
drone fired missiles on a vehicle used by Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces
(PMF), known in Arabic as Hashd al-Sha’abi.
Two officials said that senior resistance
commander Abu Baqir al-Saadi was among those assassinated in the US drone
attack.
But according to a PMF official, two resistance
commanders had been killed in the strike. Witnesses said identification cards
found nearby the charred vehicle identified them as Arkan al-Elayawi and Abu
Baqir al-Saadi.
This is the second strike on Iraq by the US
forces in less than a week.
US Central Command (CENTCOM), which operates
military activities in the West Asia region, said on Sunday that “US military
forces struck more than 85 targets in Iraq and Syria, deploying numerous
aircraft and-range bombers flown from United States. “The airstrikes employed more than 125
precision munitions,” it said.
The Pentagon claimed that American warplanes
had destroyed or severely damaged most of the targets they struck in Syria and
Iraq on Friday.
Anger in Baghdad
Meanwhile, anti-American demonstrations held at
the site of the car explosion in eastern Baghdad, with people chanting slogans
and calling for the withdrawal of US forces form the country.
Crowds also gathered near the US Embassy in Baghdad, chanting “America is the devil.”
US assassinates resistance commanders in Iraqi
capital
News sources reported on Wednesday night that
security forces have closed the entrances to Baghdad's Green Zone that houses
diplomatic missions, including the US embassy.
According Al Jazeera, all the entrances to the
green area in the center of Baghdad have been closed.
Anti-American sentiment is high in the Arab
country that has grown further since the Israeli genocidal war on the Gaza
Strip and the US support for the regime’s crimes against Palestinians.
The Iraqi government has not commented yet on
the drone strike in Baghdad but it condemned last week’s US attacks as
violation of its sovereignty and territorial integrity.
In a Security Council meeting on Monday, the
representative of Iraq to the United Nations also censured any attack on his
country under "false and illogical pretexts", a reference to US
claims that American strikes were in response to the involvement of an Iraqi
resistance group in the Jordan base attack.
“The crises in the Middle East are connected,
and we have warned about the widening scope of the conflict in the region”, the
Iraqi UN envoy said, emphasizing that the Iraqi people will never allow their
country to become the arena of political settlements.
Irna