US forces targeted Iran-backed Hezbollah Brigades’ sites in Iraq on Wednesday, killing two people. Iraq denounced an another “flagrant violation of Iraq’s sovereignty.”
Iraq accused the United States of contributing to a “reckless escalation” of violence in the region after American airstrikes targeted Iran-backed groups in the country on Wednesday.
According to Iraqi sources, the US strikes targeted the Hezbollah Brigades, a group affiliated with the Hashd al-Shaabi (Popular Mobilisation Force), an alliance of Iran-backed former paramilitary groups now integrated into Iraq’s regular armed forces.
They hit sites in the Jurf al-Sakhr area, south of Baghdad, as well as in the Al-Qaim area on the border with Syria.
Two people were killed and two wounded in the bombardments in the Al-Qaim sector, an interior ministry official and a former member of the Hashd al-Shaabi said.
The US strikes come against an already explosive regional backdrop, fuelled by the war in Gaza between Washington’s ally Israel and the Iranian-backed Palestinian Islamist movement Hamas.
In a statement, Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin said that US forces had carried out “necessary and proportionate strikes” against “three facilities used by the Iranian-backed Ketaeb Hezbollah militia group (the Hezbollah Brigades) and other Iran-affiliated groups in Iraq.”
“These precision strikes are in direct response to a series of escalatory attacks against US and coalition personnel in Iraq and Syria by Iranian-sponsored militias,” he said, referring to the US-led coalition against the Islamic State (IS) jihadist group.
In fact, the strikes came just days after US troops in western Iraq were targeted with ballistic missiles and rockets in an attack that the Pentagon blamed on militants supported by Tehran.
US-led coalition forces in Iraq and Syria have been targeted in more than 150 attacks since mid-October, many of them claimed by the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, a loose alliance of Iran-linked groups that oppose US support for Israel in the Gaza conflict.
‘Violation of Sovereignty’
US forces carried out several air strikes against the groups they hold responsible, drawing a backlash from Iraq which accused the coalition of overstepping its mission to assist the campaign against IS jihadists and called for its withdrawal.
National Security Adviser Qassem al-Araji said that Wednesday’s strikes were another “flagrant violation of Iraq’s sovereignty” and “do not help bring calm.”
“The US side should pile on the pressure for a halt to the (Israeli) offensive in Gaza rather than targeting and bombing the bases of an Iraqi national body,” Araji said in a post on X, formerly Twitter, referring to the Hashd al-Shaabi.
After previous US strikes, Prime Minister Mohamed Shia al-Sudani called for the US-led coalition in Iraq to leave, saying that the deployment must end to ensure Iraq’s security.
There are roughly 2,500 US troops in Iraq and some 900 in neighboring Syria.
Katrine Dige Houmøller, with AFP
