BAGHDAD (Dispatches) – A senior leader of the Iraqi Kata’ib Hezbollah resistance movement says the Saudi and Emirati spy agencies are directly running elements of the Daesh terrorist group, calling on Yemen’s Ansarullah movement to launch retaliatory attacks on Saudi Arabia.
“The intelligence services of Saudi Arabia and the UAE directly run Daesh elements. This is obvious to the relevant services,” Abu Ali al-Askari said via his Twitter account on Sunday evening.
He made the remarks after 13 Iraqi policemen were killed and three wounded in a Daesh terrorist attack against a checkpoint near Iraq’s northern city of Kirkuk.
In a separate attack on Sunday, at least three Iraqi soldiers were killed and one wounded when Daesh terrorists targeted an army checkpoint southeast of the Iraqi city of Mosul.
Daesh seized parts of Iraq in a lightning offensive in 2014, before being defeated by a campaign led by the Iraqi government, which included the popular forces, in late 2017.
“Those who are negligent in this regard are complicit in these crimes ... The commanders of Hashd al-Sha’abi (PMU) must take charge, especially in the northern regions,” al-Askari said, using the Arabic name of the Popular Mobilization Units, which is the largest coalition of Iraqi resistance groups that played a key role in Iraq’s 2017 victory against Daesh.
He then cautioned forces of the PMU to beware of the conspiracies hatched by the United States and the Zionist regime.
Al-Askari also asked Yemen’s Ansarullah resistance movement to attack Saudi Arabia and target its infrastructure, especially the country’s energy resources, which are the main financial source of sponsoring criminal groups.
In a large-scale operation on Saturday, the Yemeni armed forces, run by Ansarullah, used 16 drones and ballistic missiles to hit targets deep inside Saudi Arabia
The attacks targeted vital facilities, including Saudi Aramco facilities in Ras al-Tanura, Jeddah, Jizan and Najran regions.
The PMU announced in a statement on Sunday that the deputy commander of its al-Jazeera operation has been martyred.
Hassan Karim Hassan was killed in a blast caused by an explosive device in the al-Owaisat area north of Jurf al-Nasr, Babil Governorate, the resistance movement said, adding that two of his companions were wounded in the explosion.