“The American aggression was a direct targeting of the Popular Mobilization Forces. This incident will not go unnoticed because it represents a shameless targeting,” said PMF head Falih al-Fayyadh at a funeral ceremony for PMF fighters killed in the US strikes.
Washington on Friday night launched a major retaliation campaign against the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force (IRGC-QF) and Iran-aligned militias in Iraq and Syria, striking more than 85 targets with over 125 precision munitions. The strikes killed at least 16 PMF fighters and injured 36 in Iraq’s western Anbar province, near the Syrian border.
“The land of Iraq must be cleansed of foreign presence,” Fayyadh stated.
Heightened tensions between the US and the Iraqi government in recent months have elicited calls from hardline Iran-backed Iraqi politicians, as well as Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani, to expel coalition forces from the country.
“The blood of the Popular Mobilization Forces represents Iraq’s status and dignity, and we will not accept the blood of our sons to become cheap political material,” Fayyadh added.
Current talks between Baghdad and Washington to end the presence of the US-led coalition were instigated by Iraq’s anger over repeated US strikes on its territory, retaliating for more than 165 rocket and drone attacks on American troops in Iraq, Syria, and Jordan since mid-October by Iran-aligned militia groups condemning Washington’s support for Israel in its war against the Gaza Strip.
A deadly drone attack last week claimed by the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, a network of shadow IRGC-affiliated Iraqi militia groups, killed three US servicemen at a military base in Jordan.
Around 2,500 American troops in Iraq and 900 in Syria are leading an international coalition through Operation Inherent Resolve that has assisted Kurdish, Iraqi, and local Syrian forces in the fight against the Islamic State (ISIS), which once held swathes of land in Iraq and Syria but was declared territorially defeated in 2019.
