BAGHDAD: Thousands of members of Iraq’s Hashed al Shaabi paramilitary alliance gathered in Baghdad on Tuesday to mourn comrades killed in US air strikes along the Syrian border.
The American raids early on Monday sparked an exchange of fire between militias and the US-led coalition in eastern Syria, and heightened fears of a new US-Iran escalation amid ongoing efforts to revive Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with major powers.
With chants of “death to America” and “vengeance for the martyrs”, the Hashed members massed in Freedom Square near the Iraqi capital’s high-security Green Zone where the US embassy is located.
Security forces were deployed in large numbers, sealing off the Green Zone after a string of recent incursions by armed groups.
Several high-ranking Hashed figures took part in the symbolic funeral, including its top commander Faleh Al-Fayyadh and Hadi al-Ameri, head of one of its main factions, the Badr Organisation.
Many of the mourners, accompanied by vehicles packed with armed men, wore black and held up signs reading: “Attacks on the Hashed must speed up the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq.”
Others carried pictures of the revered Iranian general Qasem Soleimani and Hashed’s former second-in-command Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, who were killed in a US drone strike near Baghdad airport early last year.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitoring group said on Tuesday that nine fighters were killed in the strikes near the Albu Kamal district on the Syrian side of the border, updating an earlier toll after two of the wounded had succumbed to their injuries.
The group earlier reported that a weapons store had been destroyed.
The Hashed said four of its fighters were killed in the Qaim region near the border.
The fighters were stationed there to prevent militants infiltrating Iraq, the group said, denying they had taken part in any attacks against US interests or personnel and warning they had “the legal right to respond... and hold the perpetrators accountable on Iraqi soil”.
The Pentagon said the strikes targeted operational and weapons storage facilities at two locations in Syria and one in Iraq, all near the common border, that had been used by militias engaged in drone attacks against US interests in Iraq. — AFP
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