January 3, 2020

A top official of an Iraqi Shia militia organisation has been reported killed in a motorcade outside Baghdad airport, raising the stakes in an already tense standoff between the US and pro-Iranian forces in Iraq’s capital.

The Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) announced that its head of public relations and protocol, Mohammed Ridha, was killed in a vehicle as he was escorting “guests” from the airport. Some reports said the attack was carried out by a drone, others that it was a volley of rockets.

The identity of the “guests” and how many were killed was not made clear, but there were reports that there were Iranians among the casualties. There was also no confirmation of who had launched the attack. But it comes at a particularly dangerous moment for Iraq’s stability, hours after a two-day siege of the US embassy in Baghdad by a mob of PMF militants and their supporters.

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/jan/03/baghdad-airport-iraq-attack-deaths-iran-us-tensions