Iraq's prime minister reiterated his “firm” determination on Friday to end the presence of the international anti-jihadist coalition in Iraq, a day after an American strike that killed a leader of a pro-Iranian faction in Baghdad.
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Mohamed Chia al-Soudani, whose government is supported by parties close to Iran, has in recent weeks expressed his desire for foreign troops stationed in Iraq to leave the country.
However, this new statement comes against a backdrop of growing tensions as Iraq reels from the fallout from the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian Hamas.
On Thursday, a commander and another member of the al-Nujaba movement, part of the Hashd al-Shaabi coalition of pro-Iranian factions, were killed by a US drone strike in Baghdad.
According to Washington, this “act of self-defense” provoked the anger of the Iraqi government, which viewed it as “aggression” by the international coalition.
On Friday, Mr. Soudani reiterated “his firm position aimed at putting an end to the existence of the international coalition, since the justifications for its existence have expired.”
A “dialogue” conducted by a “bilateral committee” must “determine the modalities for the end of this presence,” he said during a tribute to Qassem Soleimani, the former architect of Iranian military operations in the Middle East, according to a press release from his services. killed by an American drone strike in Baghdad in January 2020.
American and international coalition troops, stationed in Iraq since 2014 to fight the Islamic State group, have been the target of almost daily attacks in Iraq and Syria since the conflict between Israel and Hamas began in October in the Gaza Strip itself.
Most of these attacks are claimed by the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, a fog of armed factions allied with Iran and linked to Hachd al-Chaabi, former militias that have become an integral part of regular Iraqi forces.
A new drone strike on Friday also targeted the Harir base in Iraqi Kurdistan, which “previously hosted coalition troops,” that region's counterterrorism services reported, without specifying whether that attack caused any damage.
In addition, the US military's Middle East Command (Centcom) announced that police in central Iraq's Babylon province had discovered “an Iranian-designed surface-to-surface cruise missile that could not be fired.”
“The use of Iranian ammunition by terrorist groups in Iraq and Syria endangers coalition forces and local populations,” Centcom warned.
Led by Washington, the international coalition includes several countries, including France and Spain. It emerged when ISIS jihadists controlled large areas of Iraq and Syria. As part of this coalition, Washington is deploying 2,500 troops to Iraq and 900 to Syria.
Baghdad declared its military “victory” against ISIS in late 2017, but the organization still maintains cells in remote areas of northern Iraq that carry out sporadic attacks there.