Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) said Monday that six of its fighters were killed by a “Zionist bombing” near the border with Syria as fighting in Iraq amid the US-Israeli war against Iran continues to rage.
The PMF, a coalition of mainly Shia militias that was formed in 2014 to fight ISIS and is part of Iraq’s security forces, said another four of its fighters were wounded. The US has launched multiple airstrikes against the group since the start of the war, though the PMF’s statement suggests Israel may have been responsible for Monday’s attack.
Also on Monday, Kataib Hezbollah, one of the largest militias in the PMF and the main Iran-aligned faction, announced that one of its senior officials, Hajj Abu Ali al-Askari, had been killed but offered no details about his death. According to AFP, a US airstrike in Baghdad on Saturday hit a house used by Kataib Hezbollah and killed a senior PMF official.
Drone and rocket attacks continued in Iraq on Monday as US assets have been targeted across the country since February 28, the day the US and Israel began attacks against Iran. According to Al Jazeera, two Katyusha rockets were intercepted near the US Embassy in the Green Zone in Baghdad, and a prominent hotel inside the Green Zone was struck by a drone.
Drones also targeted an oil field in southern Iraq’s Basra province. No casualties were reported in any of the drone and rocket attacks on Monday.
The US Embassy in Baghdad on Saturday issued an alert telling Americans to leave Iraq due to the continued attacks on US assets in the country, saying that US citizens shouldn’t “attempt to come to the embassy in Baghdad or the consulate general in Erbil in light of the ongoing risk of missiles, drones, and rockets in Iraqi airspace.”
A group that calls itself the Islamic Resistance in Iraq (IRI), which includes some of the militias in the PMF, has been taking credit for attacks on US forces in the country.
