BAGHDAD (Dispatches) – Iraqi resistance fighters will not lay down arms and halt their operations until all American occupation troops pull of the Arab country, the chairman of Iraq’s anti-terror Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), also known as Hashd al-Sha’abi, says.
“Armed resistance groups in Iraq have no problem in handing over all their weapons,” Falih al-Fayyadh said in an interview with Iraq’s Al Sharqiya satellite television network.
“But this will not happen until the next Iraqi government is formed, and all U.S. troops pull out of the country.”
Fayyadh stressed that Hashd al-Sha’abi had previously agreed to a request from an influential cleric and leader of the Sadrist movement, Muqtada al-Sadr, to take illegal arms out of the hands of armed groups within a few months.
The PMU chief said that resistance groups have no connection with the Iraqi government or the Hashd al-Sha’abi and that the Coordination Committee of the Iraqi Resistance serves as a “spiritual body” with “no interference” between the activities of the PMU and Iraqi resistance groups.
“Hashd Sha’abi has issued statements in the past declaring that it has no connection with any operation carried out by the resistance groups,” he hastened to add.
Anti-American sentiments have gained considerable momentum in Iraq over the U.S. military and political adventurism in the region.
Iraqi lawmakers have unanimously approved a bill that required the government to end the presence of all U.S.-led foreign military forces in the Arab country.
In another development, two Iraqi soldiers were killed and another wounded Saturday in an attack by the Daesh terrorists in Iraq’s western province of Anbar, a security source said.
The attack took place in the morning when Daesh terrorists attacked an army base near the town of Heet, some 160 km west of the capital Baghdad, leaving two soldiers killed and a third wounded, Saad al-Eisawi, an army officer in the province, told Xinhua.
The attackers made use of the bad weather as they carried out their attack during a dust storm in the early morning, al-Eisawi said.
Over the past few months, Iraqi security forces have carried out deadly attacks against terrorists to crack down on their intensified activities.