Iraqi TV and three Iraqi officials said on Friday that Iranian general Qassim Soleimani, the head of Iran’s elite Quds Force, has been killed in an airstrike at Baghdad’s international airport.
The officials said the strike also killed Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy commander of Iran-backed militias known as the Popular Mobilisation Forces.
An official with an Iran-backed paramilitary force said that seven people were killed by a missile fired at the airport, blaming the US.
Earlier, Iraq’s Security Media Cell, which releases information regarding Iraqi security, said Katyusha rockets landed near the airport’s cargo hall, killing several people and setting two cars on fire.
It was not immediately clear who fired the missile or rockets or who was targeted. There was no immediate comment from the U.S.
The security official said the bodies of those killed in the airport attack Friday were burned and difficult to identify.
The attack came amid tensions with the US after a New Year’s Eve attack by Iran-backed militias on the American embassy in Baghdad. The two-day embassy attack which ended on Wednesday prompted President Donald Trump to order about 750 US soldiers deployed to the Middle East.
The breach at the embassy followed US airstrikes on Sunday that killed 25 fighters of the Iran-backed militia in Iraq, the Kataeb Hezbollah. The US military said the strikes were in retaliation for last week’s killing of an American contractor in a rocket attack on an Iraqi military base that the U.S. blamed on the militia.
Read the article in The Australian (AP).