US drone strike in Baghdad kills high-ranking militia commander, officials say

Civil defence members gather at the site of a burned vehicle targeted by a US drone strike in east Baghdad, Iraq. Photo / AP

A US drone strike hit a car in the Iraqi capital on Wednesday night, killing three members of the powerful Kataib Hezbollah militia, including a high-ranking commander, officials said.

The strike came on a main thoroughfare in the Mashtal neighbourhood in eastern Baghdad. A crowd gathered as emergency response teams picked through the wreckage. Security forces closed off the heavily guarded Green Zone, where a number of diplomatic compounds are located, amid calls for protesters to storm the US embassy.

Two US officials familiar with the matter said a senior Kataib Hezbollah commander was targeted in a US strike on Wednesday in Iraq. They were not authorised to comment publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity.

Two officials with Iran-backed militias in Iraq said that one of the three killed was Wissam Mohammed “Abu Bakr” al-Saadi, the commander in charge of Kataib Hezbollah’s operations in Syria. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorised to speak to journalists.

Iraqi federal police gather at the site of a burned vehicle targeted by a US drone strike in east Baghdad, Iraq. Photo / AP

The strike came amid roiling tensions in the region and days after the US military launched an air assault on dozens of sites in Iraq and Syria used by Iranian-backed militias and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard in retaliation for a drone strike that killed three US troops in Jordan in late January.

The US has blamed the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, a broad coalition of Iran-backed militias, for the attack in Jordan, and officials have said they suspect Kataib Hezbollah in particular of leading it.

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq has regularly claimed strikes on bases housing US troops in Iraq and Syria against the backdrop of the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, saying they are in retaliation for Washington’s support of Israel in its war in Gaza that has killed 27,707 Palestinians, according to the health ministry in the Hamas-run territory.

Kataib Hezbollah had said in a statement that it was suspending attacks on American troops to avoid “embarrassing the Iraqi government” after the strike in Jordan, but others have vowed to continue fighting.

On Sunday, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq claimed a drone attack on a base housing US troops in eastern Syria killed six fighters from the Syrian Democratic Forces, a Kurdish-led group allied with the United States.

The latest surge in the regional conflict came shortly after Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Wednesday rejected terms proposed by Hamas for a hostage-release agreement that would lead to a permanent ceasefire, vowing to continue the war until “absolute victory”.

Also on Wednesday, the media office of the Houthi rebels in Yemen reported two airstrikes in Ras Issa area in Salif district in Hodeida province.