The reports cited the Pentagon as saying that a member of Kata’ib Hezbollah (a group part of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces), who was behind last month’s attack on a US military base in Jordan, was killed in the drone strike.
A US official said American intelligence had been tracking him for some times, following up on President Joe Biden’s promise that the response to the base attack would continue.
Videos from the scene showed the charred wreckage of a vehicle in a neighborhood of eastern Baghdad, and a nearby fire.
Iraqi security sources and media reports have also confirmed the attack, saying three people were killed after the American drone fired missiles on a vehicle used by Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), known in Arabic as Hashd al-Sha’abi.
Two officials said that senior resistance commander Abu Baqir al-Saadi was among those assassinated in the US drone attack.
But according to a PMF official, two resistance commanders had been killed in the strike. Witnesses said identification cards found nearby the charred vehicle identified them as Arkan al-Elayawi and Abu Baqir al-Saadi.
This is the second strike on Iraq by the US forces in less than a week.
US Central Command (CENTCOM), which operates military activities in the West Asia region, said on Sunday that “US military forces struck more than 85 targets in Iraq and Syria, deploying numerous aircraft and-range bombers flown from United States. “The airstrikes employed more than 125 precision munitions,” it said.
The Pentagon claimed that American warplanes had destroyed or severely damaged most of the targets they struck in Syria and Iraq on Friday.
Anger in Baghdad
Meanwhile, anti-American demonstrations held at the site of the car explosion in eastern Baghdad, with people chanting slogans and calling for the withdrawal of US forces form the country.
Crowds also gathered near the US Embassy in Baghdad, chanting “America is the devil.”
News sources reported on Wednesday night that security forces have closed the entrances to Baghdad's Green Zone that houses diplomatic missions, including the US embassy.
According Al Jazeera, all the entrances to the green area in the center of Baghdad have been closed.
Anti-American sentiment is high in the Arab country that has grown further since the Israeli genocidal war on the Gaza Strip and the US support for the regime’s crimes against Palestinians.
The Iraqi government has not commented yet on the drone strike in Baghdad but it condemned last week’s US attacks as violation of its sovereignty and territorial integrity.
In a Security Council meeting on Monday, the representative of Iraq to the United Nations also censured any attack on his country under "false and illogical pretexts", a reference to US claims that American strikes were in response to the involvement of an Iraqi resistance group in the Jordan base attack.
“The crises in the Middle East are connected, and we have warned about the widening scope of the conflict in the region”, the Iraqi UN envoy said, emphasizing that the Iraqi people will never allow their country to become the arena of political settlements.
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