Baghdad [Iraq], February 9: A spokesman for the Iraqi prime minister reacted after the US announced that a February 7 attack killed the commander of an Iran-backed group.
Iraqi Prime Minister Yahya Rasool's military spokesman said on February 8 that continuous US attacks targeting Iranian-backed armed groups in Iraq are pushing the Baghdad government to end the mission of the US-led coalition. leading in this country, according to Reuters.
Mr. Rasool also said in a statement that the US-led coalition "has become a destabilizing factor and risks drawing Iraq into a spiral of conflict."
The US military said an attack on February 7 killed a commander of Kataib Hezbollah, an Iran-backed armed group in Iraq that the Pentagon accuses of carrying out attacks on US forces.
In Washington, the Pentagon confirmed that it informed the Iraqi government about the attack immediately after it took place.
Negotiations between the two countries on the future of the US-led alliance began in January. But less than 24 hours later, three US soldiers were killed in a January 28 attack in Jordan that the US said that it was carried out by Iran-backed militias in Syria and Iraq, and negotiations have since paused.
An Iraqi military spokesman said in a statement that Iraq and the US would resume negotiations on the future of the US-led international military coalition in Iraq on February 11.
Previously, in a phone call with US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken on February 6, Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein called for negotiations to resume. Any discussion about the future of the US-led coalition in Iraq is expected to take several months or longer, and the outcome is unclear, according to Reuters.
The US-led international military coalition in Iraq was established to fight the self-proclaimed Islamic State (IS). The US has 2,500 troops in Iraq, playing the role of advising and supporting local forces to prevent the rise of IS.
Since the outbreak of the Hamas-Israel conflict in October 2023, Iraq and Syria have witnessed tit-for-tat attacks almost every day between Iran-backed hard-line armed groups and US forces stationed in the region. area, according to Reuters.
Source: Thanh Nien Newspaper
