Click to see full-size image. Via X.
At least two commanders of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) were killed and six others were wounded in a drone strike that targeted the headquarters of the Iranian-backed group in eastern Baghdad on January 4, according to Iraqi media.
Videos posted to social media showed burned vehicles and smoke rising from the targeted headquarters, which is reportedly located within a complex of the Iraqi Interior Ministry in Palestine neighborhood.
One of the commanders killed in the drone strike was identified as Mushtaq Talib “Abu Taqwa” al-Saidi, a senior commander of Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba who was responsible for the PMF’s 12th Brigade and held the position of deputy commander of operations around Bahgada. The other commander was reportedly al-Saidi’s deputy.
Iraqi media also reported that a senior commander of the PMF’s intelligence service was among the six wounded in the strike.
Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba commander Mushtaq Talib “Abu Taqwa” al-Saidi. Via X.
The PMF was formed by Iranian-backed armed factions in Iraq to fight ISIS in 2014. Four years later, the Iraqi government fully reorganized the group.
No side has claimed responsibility for the deadly strike on the PMF headquarters in Baghdad yet. In recent months, the United States launched several strikes against factions of the PMF in different parts of Iraq in response to a wave of attacks that targeted its bases in Iraq and neighboring Syria.
The attacks began on October 17, ten days after the outbreak of the Israeli war on the Gaza Strip. The so-called Islamic Resistance in Iraq (IRI) claimed responsibility for most of the attacks, saying that they were carried out in support of the Palestinian people.
The IRI is also an umbrella group made up of armed factions which are backed by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC)
Some of the PMF’s key factions, like Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba and Kata’ib Hezbollah, are thought to be also members of the IRI.
The assassination of Abu Taqwa was the most recent in a series of attacks targeting key commanders of the Iranian-led Axis of Resistance in the Middle East.
Brigadier General Razi Mousavi of the IRGC’s elite Quds Force was assassinated near the Syrian capital, Damascus, on December 25. Later on January 2, Saleh al-Arouri, deputy leader of the Palestinian Hamas Movement, was killed outside the Lebanese capital, Beirut. Israel was blamed for both assassinations.
Besides its attacks against U.S. bases in Iraq and Syria, the IRI have claimed responsibility for several attacks that targeted the southernmost Israeli city of Eilat, the occupied Syrian Golan Heights and the Karish gas field off Israel’s shores.
