BAGHDAD (Press TV) – The official spokesman for Iraq’s Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba movement, which is part of the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) or Hashd al-Sha’abi, has denounced the recent deadly U.S. airstrikes on Iraqi resistance groups on the Iraq-Syria border, stressing that the Baghdad government must show its sovereignty and full ability to ensure Iraq’s national security and stability.
Nasr al-Shammari told Press TV in an exclusive interview that United States is in fact a major violator of the international law and treaties, and it is not the first time that American troops have committed an act of aggression against the Iraqi army and even unarmed civilians of the Arab country.
“They have a bleak record of such violations and crimes. Any change in the U.S. administration is not going to lead to any change in their policies. Nothing actually alters with the change of administrations,” he pointed out.
Shammari said, “The U.S. has killed our forces in cold blood, and has violated our sovereignty by attacking them on our own soil. This is unacceptable. Iraq now needs to show it is a sovereign government, and has the ability to guarantee its own security and stability.”
U.S. warplanes attacked three targets purportedly belonging to Iraqi resistance groups along the border between Iraq and Syria in the early hours of Monday.
Sabereen News, a Telegram news channel associated with Hashd al-Sha’abi, reported that four Iraqi fighters had been killed in the attack on the headquarters of the 14th Brigade of the PMU.
Iraqi resistance factions, in a statement issued on Monday, pledged to “avenge the blood of our righteous martyrs and wreak vengeance on the perpetrators of this heinous crime”. They also warned the U.S. against repeating its aggression.
Later on Monday, Reuters news agency reported that several rockets had hit an illegal base for American occupation forces in the eastern Syrian province of Dayr al-Zawr.
The report named the exact whereabouts of the incident as the proximity of Syria’s Omar oilfield, which is controlled by the U.S.-backed SDF militant group.
CNN said some of the missiles from the Monday incident had landed near U.S. troops.