BAGHDAD, Iraq: A pro-Iran group in Iraq Tuesday said that it would halt its attacks on the US troops, after Washington pledged a “very consequential” response to a drone attack that killed three of its soldiers few days back.
“We announce the suspension of military and security operations against the occupation forces — in order to prevent embarrassment to the Iraqi government,” Kataeb Hezbollah wrote on its website.
The US blamed “radical Iran-backed militant groups operating in Syria and Iraq” for Sunday’s drone strike on a remote Jordanian desert border base.
The first US military death in an attack since the October 7 outbreak of war between Israel and Hamas has raised tensions between Washington and Tehran at the start of a US election year.
US President Joe Biden’s administration has said it does not want war with Iran – where officials have tried to distance themselves from the attack.
Kataeb Hezbollah said that “our brothers in the axis (of resistance) — especially in the Islamic Republic — do not know how we wage our jihad, and they often object to the pressure and escalation against the American occupation forces in Iraq and Syria.”
Pentagon deputy spokeswoman Sabrina Singh said Monday that the Jordanian attack had “traces of Kataeb Hezbollah,” which Washington blames for previous violence and which it classifies as “terrorists.”
The US and coalition forces have been attacked at least 165 times since mid-October — 98 in Syria and 66 in Iraq, one in Jordan.
Most of these attacks were claimed by the “Islamic Resistance Movement in Iraq”. It is a loose alliance of pro-Iran fighters that claims to defend the Palestinians and calls for the withdrawal of some 2,500 US troops from Iraq as part of an international anti-jihadist coalition.
Kataeb Hezbollah has urged its fighters to “use passive defense (temporarily), if any hostile US action occurs towards them.”
