Tens of thousands of people marched in Baghdad on Saturday to mourn Iran’s military chief Qassem Soleimani and Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, killed in a U.S. airstrike that has raised the specter of wider conflict in the Middle East, Reuters informed.
By ordering Friday’s air strike on the commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s foreign legions, President Donald Trump has taken Washington and its allies, mainly Saudi Arabia and Israel, into uncharted territory in its confrontation with Iran and its proxy militias across the region.
Gholamali Abuhamzeh, a senior commander of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards, said Tehran would punish Americans “wherever they are in reach”, and raised the prospect of possible attacks on ships in the Gulf.
The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad urged American citizens to leave Iraq following the strike at Baghdad airport that killed Soleimani. Dozens of American employees of foreign oil companies left the southern Iraqi city of Basra on Friday.
Close U.S. ally Britain warned its nationals on Saturday to avoid all travel to Iraq, outside the autonomous Kurdistan region, and to avoid all but essential travel to Iran.
Soleimani, a 62-year-old general, was Tehran’s pre-eminent military commander and – as head of the Quds Force, the foreign arm of the Revolutionary Guards – the architect of Iran’s spreading influence in the Middle East.
Muhandis was the deputy commander of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) umbrella body of paramilitary groups. An elaborate, PMF-organized procession carrying the bodies of Soleimani, Muhandis and other Iraqis killed in the U.S. strike took place in Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone.
Mourners included many militiamen in uniform for whom Muhandis and Soleimani were heroes. They waved Iraqi and militia flags. They also carried portraits of both men and plastered them on walls and armored personnel carriers in the procession, and chanted, “No No Israel” and “No No America”, Reuters adds.
Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi and Iraqi militia commander Hadi al-Amiri, a close Iran ally and the top candidate to succeed Muhandis, attended.
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