IRAQ’S anti-terror group Kata’ib Hezbollah says the United States has turned its embassy compound in the heavily fortified Green Zone in Baghdad into a military command centre which is conspiring against the Iraqi nation.
Abu Ali al-Askari, a senior security official with Kata’ib Hezbollah (Hezbollah Brigades), made the remarks in a statement on Sunday, emphasising that the diplomatic mission serves as a major base where military and security operations against the Iraqi people are being planned.
While the embassy acts as a den of espionage, some Iraqi politicians are turning a blind eye to the matter for the sake of their own positions.
Askari said they are simply declaring that such buildings are diplomatic installations and must be protected under international conventions.
‘Shame on such politicians and their personal interests, which are seriously detrimental to the country. These individuals tend to condone the fact in order to maintain their posts. The fact of the matter is that these positions will disappear once the invaders are driven out,’ the senior Kata’ib Hezbollah official said.
The statement comes as approximately seven mortar rounds landed in the US embassy compound in Baghdad during an attack early on Friday.
The attacks are the most recorded against United States forces in the region in a single day since mid-October, when resistance forces started targeting US-occupied bases in Iraq and neighbouring Syria over Washington’s unqualified support of Israel in its bloody onslaught on Gaza.
Pentagon chief Lloyd Austin, in a call with Iraq’s Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani, condemned the attacks and singled out Kata’ib Hezbollah and Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba groups for the recent targeting of US servicemen.
Last week, the leader of Iraq’s Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba warned that the United States will pay dearly for an attack that had killed five members of the resistance group in the north of Iraq.
Sheikh Akram al-Kaabi said in a statement on December 4th that the US should expect more painful attacks by Iraqi resistance forces on its bases and interests in the country following an airstrike that killed Nujaba fighters in Kirkuk a day earlier.
Kaabi warned that attacks by Iraqi resistance groups on US forces will continue until they are completely expelled from Iraq.
The attacks by Iraqi resistance forces are part of a larger regional pattern of anti-US and anti-Israeli action ever since Israel launched its aggression against Gaza in early October.
This includes attacks on targets in the occupied territories by the Yemeni army and the Lebanese resistance group Hezbollah.
Yemen’s Ansarullah movement has also seized a ship believed to be linked to the Israeli regime.
The group has warned that its regards all ships linked to Israel which sail off Yemeni ports as legitimate targets.
- Iranian President Ebrahim Raeisi has criticised the United States for vetoing a United Nations Security Council resolution calling for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza.
At a time when the world is demanding an end to Israel’s war crimes in Palestine, the US veto of the UNSC ceasefire resolution proves that it is the root of the regime’s war on Gaza and its crimes against people in the besieged territory, Raeisi said in a post on his X account on Sunday.
‘The US is the main supporter of the massacre of innocent Gazan women & children,’ he stated.
On Friday, the US used its veto in the United Nations Security Council to block a draft resolution calling for an immediate humanitarian ceasefire in Gaza.
Thirteen Security Council members voted in favour of the resolution, put forward by the United Arab Emirates, while the United Kingdom abstained.
The General Assembly, where the US has no veto power, overwhelmingly supported a humanitarian ceasefire.
On October 26, the Assembly approved the ceasefire with 120 votes in favour and only 14 against – the resolution is non-binding however.
In a statement last Saturday, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kan’ani said the US veto of the resolution once again showed Washington’s leading role in the genocide of Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
‘The US government once again proved that it is the main culprit and guilty party in the killing of civilians and Palestinian citizens, especially women and children, and destruction of vital infrastructure in Gaza,’ Kan’ani said.
Israel waged its war on Gaza on October 7th, after the Palestinian resistance movement Hamas carried out the surprise Operation Al-Aqsa Storm into the occupied territories in response to Tel Aviv’s intensified crimes against the Palestinian people.
Following this, the regime’s leaders ordered Israeli military forces to attack the besieged Gaza Strip with a force ‘like never before’.
Israeli strikes have so far killed more than 17,700 people, most of them women and children, and injured nearly 48,800 others in its relentless air and ground attacks on Gaza since October 7th.
- The Yemeni Armed Forces have blocked the passage of a merchant vessel bound for the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories as it was sailing in the Red Sea, after declaring it will block the passage of all ships heading for Israeli ports, in support of the Gaza Strip.
Lebanon’s Arabic-language al-Mayadeen television news network, citing a statement released by Yemen’s Defence Ministry, reported on Sunday that ‘a proper interaction was carried out with the ship, but it did not pay heed to our warnings.’
The statement added that the vessel was subsequently ‘blocked from passing through and was forced to turn back.’
On Saturday, spokesman for the Yemeni Armed Forces Brigadier General Yahya Saree warned that if Gaza does not receive the food and medicines it needs, all ships passing through Yemen’s territorial waters towards the occupied territories in the Red Sea would be regarded as a ‘legitimate target’.
He emphasised that all ships from around the world can continue their commercial activity, except those related to the Israeli regime or destined for the ports of the occupied territories.
Yemenis have declared their open support for Palestine’s struggle against the Israeli occupation since the regime launched a devastating war on Gaza on October 7th after the territory’s Palestinian resistance movements carried out a surprise retaliatory attack, dubbed Operation Al-Aqsa Storm, against the occupying entity.
On December 4th, the Yemeni army targeted two Israeli ships in the Red Sea as they were attempting to cross the Bab el-Mandeb Strait.
Reports have shown that Israeli shipping companies have already decided to reroute their vessels for fear of Yemeni attacks.
Yemeni forces have also launched missile and drone attacks on targets in the Israeli-occupied territories of Palestine following the occupying regime’s aggression on Gaza.
- The Israeli military says more than a hundred soldiers have been killed since the beginning of the regime’s ground offensive in the Gaza Strip, more than two months after Israel waged its war on the besieged territory.
Yesterday, (Monday) they announced the deaths of four Israeli soldiers, noting that three of them were killed during fighting in the southern Gaza Strip on Sunday.
The statement added that the latest fatalities bring the toll of Israeli troops in the ground offensive against fighters from the Palestinian Hamas resistance movement to 101.
The figure comes a day after the Israeli army said 425 soldiers have been killed since the start of the Gaza conflict in early October.
According to the military release, 1,593 other troops were also injured, including 559 soldiers wounded in the Gaza ground invasion.
Israeli daily newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth also reported on Saturday that more than 5,000 soldiers had been injured in Gaza since the latest conflict began, with more than 2,000 officially recognised by the regime’s ministry of military affairs as disabled.
The Palestinian Hamas resistance movement says the occupying Israeli regime does not care at all about its soldiers being held captive in the besieged Gaza Strip.
Meanwhile, the Hebrew-language Haaretz newspaper has examined the data released by the hospitals, where wounded Israeli soldiers have been treated, and found an ‘unexplained gap between the data reported by the military and that from the hospitals.’
The hospitals’ data shows the number of wounded soldiers to be twice as high as the army’s numbers, and the paper reported that is likely an undercount.
