For now, the source of the attack has not been identified and there is no indication of the damage caused by the blasts that occurred in an area where US military forces are stationed.
The US embassy in Baghdad awaits the arrival of several hundred troops who have been deployed to protect its foreign office in Iraq as anti-American sentiment grows after the United States airstrike that killed the commander. from Iran’s elite Al-Quds force, Qassem Soleimani.
General Qassem Soleimani died on Friday in an air strike on Baghdad International Airport that the Pentagon said was ordered by the President of the United States.
In the same attack also died Abu Mehdi, ‘number two’ of the coalition of pro-Iranian paramilitary groups in Iraq known as the Popular Mobilization (Hachd al-Chaabi), along with six others.
The attack came three days after an unprecedented two-day assault on the US embassy that only ended when Trump announced the deployment of another 750 troops to the Middle East.
The attack has already sparked a number of reactions, with four of the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council – Russia, France, the United Kingdom and China – alerted to the inevitable escalation of tensions in the region, calling on the parties to reduce the tension. The fifth permanent member of the UN Security Council is the United States.
In Iran, the feeling is revenge, with the President and the Revolutionary Guards assuring that the country and “other free nations in the region” will take revenge on the United States.
Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei also vowed to avenge the general’s death and declared three days of national mourning, while the head of diplomacy called it “an act of international terrorism”.
On the Iraqi side, the resigning Prime Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi warned that this assassination would “trigger a devastating war in Iraq” and the great Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the leading figure in Iraqi politics, considered the assassination of the Iranian general. Qassem Soleimani “an unjustified attack” and “a blatant violation of Iraqi sovereignty.”
RJP // ROC
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