Thousands of Iraqis mourn the body of Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis in Basra

Thousands of Iraqis gathered in the streets of the southern city of Basra today, Tuesday, for the funeral of the leader of the popular crowd, Jamal Jaafar Ibrahim, known by the nominal name Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis, who was killed in an American air strike with the commander of the Iranian Quds Force Qassem Soleimani last Friday.

About 30,000 people took to the streets in Basra waving Iraqi flags and the crowd, chanting, "Death to America" ​​and "No to Israel."

The body of the engineer arrived in his hometown of Basra after several funerals in other regions of Iraq and Iran, and he will be transferred to the city of Najaf for burial after the funeral.

The governor of Basra, Asaad Al-Eidani, had announced earlier that the official working hours of the governorate’s departments had been suspended today, in conjunction with the funeral of the engineer’s body coming from Iran after conducting the nuclear examination.

A US plane attack on Baghdad airport last Friday killed Soleimani, who oversaw Tehran's campaign to establish influence in the region, as well as the engineer in an attack that raised fears of a wider conflict in the Middle East.

The engineer was the Iraqi adviser to Soleimani, the senior military commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, which supports many Iraqi armed groups, such as the Hezbollah Brigades, which was formed by the engineer in 2003 after the US-led invasion.

He was also the de facto leader of the PMF, which gives him significant influence over Iranian-backed Shiite fighters in the country.

Analysts say his death means Iran will face difficulties in controlling these forces in Iraq.

"Our revenge and killing of America will be its expulsion from Iraq," said Mohsen al-Hakim, a Shiite cleric who was standing next to the convoy transporting the body.

The engineer has fought for decades with Soleimani, along with other prominent Iraqi faction leaders such as Hadi al-Amiri, the favorite to succeed him.

And they fought together against Iran against Saddam Hussein in the Iran-Iraq war in the 1980s. He also worked with the Iranian Revolutionary Guards in Kuwait to organize attacks on embassies there of countries that supported Saddam during the war.

The engineer, in recording a video that he left as a will after his death, called on his supporters to "perpetuate jihad." From Kuwait to Iran to Iraq, and the youth of Badr, the youth of the resistance who resisted the occupation, the youth of jihad, and the youth of the crowd.

The US air strike that killed him with Soleimani sparked a broader reaction among Iraqis and prompted parliament to pass a resolution on Sunday calling for an end to the presence of foreign forces in the country, reflecting fears of sparking a new war in the region.