This is an entry from: Live updates: US-Iran tensions after Qassem Soleimani's killing
US to send 3,000 troops to Middle East
3 January 2020 18:31 GMT
The United States is sending almost 3,000 soldiers to the Middle East as a precaution amid rising threats to American forces in the region, US officials said on Friday.
The deployment of additional soldiers comes after thousands of people, most of them affiliated with the Iran-backed Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMU), attacked the US embassy on Tuesday.
The news also comes hours after an American air strike killed Qassem Soleimani, the commander of Iran's secretive Quds Force and one of the country's most powerful figures.
The overnight attack, authorised by US President Donald Trump, was a dramatic escalation in a "shadow war" in the Middle East between Iran and the United States and its allies, principally Israel and Saudi Arabia.