Live updates: US-Iran tensions after Qassem Soleimani's killing
Live Updates
About 24 hours after assassinating top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, the US military targeted camps belonging to the Iran-backed Popular Mobilisation Units (PMU) late on Friday, Reuters reported.
The strikes killed six fighters at a base in Taj north of Baghdad, the news agency said, citing an Iraqi military source.
The PMU has said in a statement that it denies that a top commander was killed, saying that medics were killed near the Taji stadium in Baghdad.
For more on this, check out our breaking news coverage here.
Congresswoman Ilhan Omar gave a warning to people that are vilifying those who are expressing caution against going to war against Iran.
The Muslim congresswoman said that the same rhetoric led to the US invasion of Iraq. Omar has been a vocal critic against the Donald Trump administration, as well as American interventionism.
"They're going to accuse anyone who cautions against war of 'siding with our enemies' or 'supporting terrorists'," Omar tweeted.
"Don't fall for it," she added.
"Soleimani was plotting imminent and sinister attacks on American diplomats and military personnel, but we caught him in the act and terminated him," US President Donald Trump told reporters at his Mar-a-Lago resort.
Trump said the strike that killed Soleimani was taken "to stop a war".
"We did not take action to start a war," Trump said.
"Soleimani made the death of innocent people his sick passion," Trump added.
Jordan's Royal Jordanian airlines and Bahrain's Gulf Air have suspended all flights to Baghdad, the two airlines announced in statements on Friday, citing security concerns.
Gulf Air also suspended flights to and from Iraq's Najaf International Airport, located about two and a half hours south of Baghdad.
Both operators said the flights will be suspended "until further notice".
A Qatar Airways spokesman said the airline was still flying to Baghdad "with caution".
"If any slight change we may cancel - slight change meaning escalation," he said, according to AFP.
The United States designated Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq (AAH), one of the top factions of Iraq's Popular Mobilisation Units, as a foreign terrorist organisation (FTO).
In a statement, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo also designated two of AAH's leaders, Qais and Laith al-Khazali, as Specially Designated Global Terrorists.
Last month, the US Treasury Department slapped sanctions on Qais al-Khazali, head of the AAH militia, for having "opened fire on peaceful protests, killing dozens of innocent civilians".
The Iranian-backed AAH has been accused of deploying snipers on rooftops in Baghdad during the protests.
Khazali has denied the accusation and insisted the militia has not participated in violence against protesters.
Ismail Qaani, the new commander of Iran's Quds Force, a special detachment of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, has called for patience in the aftermath of Soleimani's killing.
Qaani said revenge against the US will be taken.
"We tell everyone be patient to see the dead bodies of Americans all over the Middle East," Qaani said.
Qaani had served as Soleimani's deputy chief, and was named the Quds Force's new commander on Friday by Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Khamenei himself vowed revenge for the killing of Soleimani.
"His departure to God does not end his path or his mission, but a forceful revenge awaits the criminals who have his blood and the blood of the other martyrs last night on their hands," the supreme leader said in a statement.
The United States has urged its citizens to evacuate from Iraq amid heightened tensions in the region in the aftermath of the killing of Iran's top commander Qassem Soleimani.
The US State Department issued a statement on Friday calling on Americans to leave Iraq, and said all consular activities at its embassy in Baghdad are suspended.
"US citizens should depart via airline while possible, and failing that, to other countries via land," the department said.
The announcement comes after thousands of people, the majority of them affiliated with the Iran-backed Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMU), attacked the US embassy on Tuesday.
Angry crowds marched towards the usually high-security Green Zone to the embassy gates, where they hurled rocks towards the compound, outraged by US air raids in Iraq and Syria that killed 25 PMU fighters over the weekend.
"US citizens should not approach the Embassy," the department said.
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.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spoke on the phone with multiple world leaders about the strike that killed Soleimani in Iraq, including the foreign ministers of the UK, Germany, France and Russia.
He also spoke to Pakistan's chief of staff, Afghanistan's President Ashraf Ghani and Chinese Politburo member Yang Jiechi.
In a call with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, Pompeo thanked the crown prince for "Saudi Arabia's steadfast support and for recognizing the continuing aggressive threats posed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force", according to a statement.
Pompeo similarly thanked Abu Dhabi's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed in a phone call.
The secretary of state said in an interview with CNN on Friday that the strike was made in order to "save American lives", that there were imminent threats Iran was planning in the region.
The US's top diplomat has stressed multiple times that Washington "remains committed to de-escalation".
While Soleimani’s death has been at the forefront of the news since the deadly US strike on the Baghdad airport last night, at least nine other people have also died in the attack.
One of them was Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy head of the Iran-backed Hashd al-Shaabi Iraqi militia, a prominent Iraqi paramilitary commander since the 1980s with strong ties to Iran.
So who is the man behind the group which led the storming of the US embassy on 31 December?
In Iran, there have been huge public displays of grief, both on the streets and during Friday prayers.
Meanwhile at Soleimani's home a mourning ceremony has taken place attended by several top Iranian officials, video circulated online shows.
Syrian refugees, too, are remembering their suffering at the hands of Soleimani-commanded forces.
Khoula al-Ali, who is displaced from the city of Homs and lives in the Saudi city of Jeddah, believes that the powerful Soleimani was effectively the president of Syria, Iraq and Lebanon.
In 2013, Ali was forced with her husband and five of her children from the north of Syria’s Homs province to southern Daraa, from where she travelled to Jordan and eventually Saudi Arabia through smuggling routes.
"Soleimani is primarily responsible for the suffering of all the people of Homs," she tells Harun al-Aswad.
"The killing of Soleimani is a major victory for all mothers who lost their children as a result of Soleimani and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard's support for the Syrian president."
Imran Hajar, from Aleppo, lives in the Turkish province of Bursa. He agrees with Ali: “The killing of Soleimani is a great victory for the Syrian revolution, and for all the Syrian detainees.”
Both within Syria and in the diaspora, Syrians are congratulating themselves on Soleimani’s demise, Hajar says.
"Soleimani was the main cause of injustice and the killing and displacement of many civilians from their cities. Today, thank God, he died."
Though officials in Washington were quick to confirm last night that it was indeed a US strike that killed Soleimani, they have been largely tight-lipped today.
One potential slip has come from Republican Senator Lindsey Graham, who has claimed prior knowledge of the op days before.
As Yossi Melman has outlined in Middle East Eye, Soleimani kept a high profile and rarely disappeared underground for cover. In general, intelligence services refrain from targeting each other's chiefs, so he may have felt able to move with impunity.
If he did feel under threat, emerging in Baghdad airport so close to a US facilitiy was certainly brazen.
As for the Israelis, they're just trying to keep quiet and hope Iran and its allies don't think that an Israeli hand lay behind the assassination, Melman writes.
You can read more here: After Soleimani's death, Israel just wants to shield itself from the storm
In Iraqi capital where Soleimani was killed, anti-government protesters who have been demonstrating for months against corruption vowed to continue their uprising after the assassination.
Militias backed by the Iranian general had been accused of targeting protesters. Hundreds of demonstrators have been killed since the protest movement started late last year, leading to the resignation of Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi.
Mohammed Al-Khafaji, a 32-year-old Baghdad resident, condemned the assassinations, calling the strikes a violation of Iraq's sovereignty. But he stressed that demonstrations will continue.
"We are still keep protesting and such things do not stop us to continue demanding our constitutional rights," Khafaji said.
For his part, Muntadher Mahdi, a protesters from the southern Maysan province, said he was not grieving for the Iranian general.
"We will keep holding the streets to get the government we want, the demands we ask for," he told MEE while preparing lunch for fellow protesters in his tent in Baghdad's Tahrir Square.
"I am so happy after hearing about the killing of Soleimani. He was calling us 'vandalised protesters'."
Mahdi went on to accuse the Iran-backed Iran-backed Popular Mobilisation Units (PMU) of killing peaceful protesters "while we all holding the Iraqi flag".
With the assassination of Qassem Soliemani, Trump has ordered what his predecessors avoided for fear of potential catastrophic fall out, writes former Italian diplomat and MEE contributor Marco Carnelos.
“Surely, it will be a gesture that will strengthen his image among his political constituency in an election year,” Carnelos says.
But in the end, he argues, Iran will play a long game, and gradually change the region’s balances in ways that are detrimental to the interests of the US and its allies.
“In other words, if this US escalation was a deliberate choice to push Iran into a reckless reaction in order to blame it for the start of a new regional war - quite an easy task with the current state of mainstream journalism - some sorcerer's apprentices in the Beltway may be sorely disappointed.”
Read more here, including why those who bought Saudi Aramco shares should now thank Trump.
