Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) said on Tuesday that US airstrikes in Anbar, western Iraq, killed 15 of its fighters, including a senior commander. Iraqi media reported that Iraqi Prime Minister
“In a blatant and cowardly attack, the commander of the Anbar Operations in the Popular Mobilization Forces, Saad Dua al-Bayji, was martyred along with a group of his heroic comrades following a treacherous American airstrike that targeted the command headquarters while they were performing their national duty,” the PMF said in a statement, according to The Cradle.
The group added that it was holding the Iraqi government “fully responsible for confronting these repeated American violations and taking clear and resolute positions to preserve the country’s sovereignty and put an end to these grave transgressions.”
Iraqi media later reported that Iraq’s National Security Council, chaired by Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, has given the PMF the green light to respond to attacks on its positions, a significant step from the US-backed Iraqi government that will likely lead to further escalations inside the country.
The PMF is a coalition of mostly Shia militias aligned with Iran that formed in 2014 to fight ISIS and is officially part of Iraq’s security forces. Since the US and Israel launched the war against Iran on February 28, the US has launched extensive strikes against the PMF, killing dozens of its fighters.
US bases and diplomatic facilities in Iraq have come under constant missile and drone attacks and have mostly been claimed by a group that calls itself the Islamic Resistance in Iraq (IRI), which includes some of the factions in the PMF. Amid the heavy attacks, the US ordered all American citizens to leave Iraq, and NATO has withdrawn its forces from the country.
The IRI said on Monday that the US has also pulled all of its forces out of Camp Victory, a major US base near the Baghdad airport, but the withdrawal hasn’t been confirmed. “We confirm that the American and NATO forces have completed their withdrawal from Camp Victory near Baghdad Airport via cargo planes and vehicles overland towards Jordan,” the group said. “We will not allow the current government, or the future government, God willing, to allow the Americans and NATO to return to Iraq.”
If the US did pull its troops out of Baghdad, there would still be US forces in Iraqi Kurdistan. Kataib Hezbollah, one of the main Iran-aligned militias in Iraq, has said that it has halted attacks on the US Embassy in Baghdad to give the US time to evacuate the facility. “Our primary condition is the expulsion of all foreign troops from the north to the south of Iraq,” a Kataib Hezbollah official said.
