The gunfire that fell on the night of Thursday, January 2 to Friday, January 3 near Baghdad’s international airport clearly had a very specific target: vehicles traveling near the air cargo terminal. Inside this convoy, members of Hachd Al-Chaabi, a coalition of predominantly pro-Iran paramilitaries now integrated into the Iraqi state, and several "Guests", according to officials from the security services cited by the France-Presse agency (AFP).
A spectacular bombardment, which comes only three days after an unprecedented attack on the American embassy by pro-Iranian demonstrators, and while the Iraqi territory seems to become over the days the scene of an episode of high tension between the United States and Iran.
Among the victims of this new attack, prominent figures in this geopolitical standoff. The powerful Iranian general Ghassem Soleimani, in charge of Iraqi affairs in the ideological army of Iran, was killed, according to Iraqi state television. Major figure of the Tehran regime, formed within the Revolutionary Guards, and become head of their elite unit, the Al-Quds force, the general imposed the Iranian power from Iraq to Lebanon, passing through Syria .
Iraqi Hashd Al-Chaabi number two also killed
The pro-Iranian Hachd Al-Chaabi militias, whose convoy was therefore targeted, also announced the death of their number two Abu Mehdi Al-Mouhandis. This coalition of paramilitaries, in the process, accused the United States of being responsible for the bombing. Washington has so far not commented.
Iraq, which has been trapped between its American and Iranian allies for years, has been the scene of an escalation in recent weeks that threatens to make the country a battleground for the two powers acting on its soil. A dozen rocket attacks have targeted US soldiers and diplomats since the end of October, killing a US contractor a week ago.
On Sunday evening, Washington, which accuses the pro-Iran factions of Hashd Al-Chaabi of being behind these unclaimed attacks, responded by bombing bases at one of them near the Syrian border, killing 25 people. On Tuesday, a crowd of pro-Iran fighters and supporters attacked the American embassy in Baghdad, an unprecedented episode of violence that ended on Wednesday with the withdrawal of these men from the ultra-secure "green zone" of Baghdad. where the embassy is, by order of the Hashd.
