U.S. airstrike in Baghdad kills Iran-backed militia leader

 

  The U.S. military killed an Iraqi militia leader with an airstrike in Iraq’s capital city on Thursday. The group is known as Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba, and the man killed appears to be Abu Taqwa al-Saeedi, deputy commander of the Iran-backed Popular Mobilization Forces in Iraq, according to Charles Lister of the Middle East Institute. U.S. officials confirmed the strike in a short statement to Reuters news agency.

Lister called the strike “A remarkably bold move by an otherwise risk-averse Biden administration that remains committed to sustaining a U.S. military presence in Iraq.” Early indications seem to suggest the Thursday strike involved an air-to-ground AGM-179 JAGM missile.

Iraqi officials called it “a blatant aggression and violation of Iraq's sovereignty,” according to a spokesman for Iraq’s military, using the social media account of Iraq’s prime minister. He also called it “unwarranted” and an “action that  undermines the previously established understandings between the Iraqi Armed Forces and the Global Coalition Forces” fighting ISIS in the region.