Members of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) gathered in Baghdad on Tuesday to mourn comrades killed in US airstrikes along the Syrian border.
The PMF members massed in Freedom Square near the Iraqi capital’s high-security Green Zone where the US Embassy is located.
Several high-ranking PMF figures took part in the symbolic funeral, including its top commander Faleh Al-Fayyadh and Hadi Al-Ameri, head of one of its main factions, the Badr Organization.
Many of the mourners, accompanied by vehicles packed with armed men, wore black and held up signs reading: “Attacks on the PMF must speed up the withdrawal of American troops from Iraq,” AFP reported.
Others carried pictures of the revered Iranian general Qassem Soleimani and PMF's former second-in-command Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis, who were killed in a US drone strike near Baghdad airport early last year.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights war monitoring group said on Tuesday that nine fighters were killed in the strikes near the Albu Kamal district on the Syrian side of the border, updating an earlier toll after two of the wounded had succumbed to their injuries.
The group earlier reported that a weapons store had been destroyed.
The PMF said four of its fighters were killed in the Qaim region near the border.
The Pentagon said the strikes targeted operational and weapons storage facilities at two locations in Syria and one in Iraq, all near the common border, that had been used by militias engaged in drone attacks against US interests in Iraq.
US forces were subsequently “attacked by multiple rockets” in eastern Syria, but there were no casualties and personnel “conducted counter-battery artillery fire at rocket launching positions,” coalition spokesman Wayne Marotto said on Twitter.
American forces in Iraq, where 2,500 US troops are deployed as part of an international coalition to fight the ISIS group, have been targeted in more than 40 attacks this year.
Monday’s strikes were the second such deadly raid on pro-Iran targets since US President Joe Biden took office.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken declared that the US airstrikes on pro-Iran fighters in Iraq and Syria sent a “strong message” not to keep attacking US forces in Iraq.
Iraq’s Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi condemned the strikes as an “unacceptable violation of Iraqi sovereignty and Iraqi national security” and warned against any escalation.
