US Embassy in Iraq Taken by Angry Crowd

The American Embassy in Baghdad at the center of tensions. Thousands of supporters of pro-Iranian Iraqi paramilitaries forced entry on Tuesday (December 31st) to protest against American raids in Iraq. In return, American forces fired tear gas canisters to disperse the crowd.

For the sake of appeasement, the resigning Prime Minister, Adel Abdel Mahdi, called the demonstrators to leave the area of ​​the American embassy

The angry crowd protested the American air raids that killed 25 fighters from Hezbollah Brigades, an Iraqi Shiite armed group that is a member of Hachd al-Chaabi, a coalition of paramilitary factions dominated by pro-Iran factions and integrated into Iraqi regular forces, on Sunday.

Thousands of Hashd fighters and supporters who participated in the funeral procession of the killed fighters managed to cross without difficulty all the checkpoints of the ultra-secure Baghdad Green Zone, where the embassy and Iraqi institutions are located, noted AFP journalists.

[MAIN FOCUS AT NOON] - Thousands of pro-Iranian supporters in Iraq forced entry to the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad to protest American raids, prompting U.S. forces to fire tear gas canisters for disperse #AFP (3/5) pic.twitter.com/p6hVo5RRqN

They then organized a sit-in in front of the embassy and led the prayer in memory of the 25 killed combatants, before managing to cross the first enclosure of the gigantic ultra-secure complex.

US forces then fired tear gas and stun grenades from inside the chancery.

"No to America"

Before the embassy attack, the demonstrators burned security facilities outside the embassy, ​​tore off the surveillance cameras, threw stones at the turrets of his guards and covered the armored windows with flags of the Hachd and Hezbollah Brigades.

"No to America," they wrote on a wall. On another: "Closed by order of the Resistance Brigades".

#Irak Thousands of protesters attacked the US Embassy in Baghdad on Tuesday, burning flags, tearing down surveillance cameras and shouting "Death to America" ​​after deadly American raids on an Iraqi armed group Iranian pic.twitter.com/2MmHBWvl6q

The top Hashd leaders - Iraqi state officials who regularly interact with American officials - were present, AFP journalists said.

The US strikes were in retaliation for the death of an American contractor on Friday in the eleventh rocket attack in two months, unclaimed but attributed by Washington to Hezbollah Brigades. Since then, anti-American sentiment has been exacerbated by pro-Iran supporters in Iraq, a country shaken since October 1 by a popular revolt which denounces the Iraqi government accused of corruption and incompetence, as well as the growing influence of his Iranian godfather.

The pro-Iran armed and political factions are waging a vast campaign to denounce the US-Iraqi cooperation agreement that frames the presence of 5,200 American soldiers in Iraq. US forces, which invaded Iraq in 2003 and overthrew dictator Saddam Hussein, withdrew from the country in 2011. However, troops returned in 2014 as part of the international coalition against the jihadist group Islamic State (IS) ).

During the three years of war against IS, these men fought on the same side as those of the Hashd. But today the Hashd, of which many factions were born in the fight against the American occupation, are a more serious threat to the Americans than the IS, according to American sources.

"Protect" and "prevent"

Also in the Green Zone, another campaign is underway: in Parliament, more than a hundred deputies have already signed a call to put the ouster of foreign troops from Iraq on the agenda.

Baghdad has already announced that it will summon the American ambassador (currently out of the country, according to a diplomatic source), while Washington accused Iraq of having failed to "protect" its soldiers and diplomats, present "at (his) invitation ".

The Iraqi government, which has resigned, replies, him, that "the American forces acted according to their political priorities and not those of the Iraqis".

Prime Minister Adel Abdel Mahdi admitted being informed of the strikes shortly before they took place by the Pentagon.

"We tried to warn commanders," he continued, visibly in vain, given the significant human and material toll.

Attacks on American interests or pro-Iranian bases also raise concerns about what Iraqi leaders have been warning about for months: that their two American and Iranian allies are using Iraq as their battleground.

Abroad, Tehran and its Lebanese ally, Hezbollah, denounced the American raids as "support for terrorism".

The United States' allies in the Gulf have denounced the rocket attacks on bases sheltering Americans in Iraq, considering that Iran and the factions which are loyal to it were a "destabilizing force" in the face of which "nations have the right to defend themselves".

With AFP

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