Iraq’s Hezbollah Issues New Threat to US and Israel After Officials Killed

A representative of a well-armed Iran-backed militia in Iraq has issued a new warning to the United States and Israel after at least two of its officials were reportedly killed in a U.S. strike in Baghdad.

It comes amid worsening Middle East violence on the sidelines of the ongoing war in Gaza.

U.S. Central Command took responsibility on Wednesday for what it called “a unilateral strike in Iraq in response to the attacks on U.S. service members, killing a Kata’ib Hezbollah commander responsible for directly planning and participating in attacks on U.S. forces in the region.”

“There are no indications of collateral damage or civilian casualties at this time,” CENTCOM added. “The United States will continue to take necessary action to protect our people. We will not hesitate to hold responsible all those who threaten our forces’ safety.”

Channels affiliated with Kataib Hezbollah identified two of the slain as support officer Abu Baqir al-Saadi and intelligence operative Arkan al-Aliawi in an apparent drone strike in Baghdad. In response, a representative of Kataib Hezbollah warned that the group maintained an arsenal capable of striking beyond Iraq, including targets in neighboring Jordan, and as far away as Israel’s Mediterranean coast and its Karesh gas field.

“Our drones and missiles began from Ain Al Asad, have reached Jordan to Haifa, to Karesh, and will reach anywhere we want at any time we want,” the Kataib Hezbollah representative told Newsweek.

An official statement released by Kataib Hezbollah Secretary-General Abu Hussein al-Hamidawi mourned Saadi, whose real name was identified as Wissam Mohammed Saber, but did not broadcast any immediate plans for retaliation.

Another leading Iraqi militia, the Nujaba Movement, also known as the Hezbollah Al-Nujaba Movement, issued a more ominous response to what it called a direct attack on Iraq’s sovereignty given Saadi’s stated position in not only Kataib Hezbollah, but the Iraqi state-sponsored Popular Mobilization Forces paramilitary coalition, of which both Kataib Hezbollah and the Nujaba Movement are a part.

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