
At 9:30pm on Wednesday, a United States drone strike hit a car in the al-Mashtal neighbourhood of east Baghdad. US Central Command claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement on X, saying it was a “unilateral strike” in retaliation for attacks on US soldiers at a base in Jordan in late January.
Three men from Kataib Hezbollah, part of a coalition of militias-turned-state apparatus called the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), were killed in the US strike, including Wissam Mohammed, the commander in charge of Kataib Hezbollah’s operations in Syria, who went by the nom de guerre Abu Bakr al-Saadi.