The US embassy in Baghdad has called on all American citizens to leave Iraq immediately. It comes just as top Iranian general Qasem Soleimani was killed in a US airstrike in the capital, causing a prominent Iraqi cleric to call an anti-US army to arms.
Soleimani’s assassination was ordered by President Donald Trump. In a statement, the embassy said today: ‘Due to heightened tensions in Iraq and the region, the US Embassy urges American citizens to heed the January 2020 Travel Advisory and depart Iraq immediately. ‘US citizens should depart via airline while possible, and failing that, to other countries via land.’
The statement also added that US citizens should ‘not approach the embassy’, while the consulate general in Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan, would be open for appointments.
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The general (right) pictured with Iraqi Shi’a cleric Muqtada al-Sadr
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After Soleimani’s death, cleric Muqtada al-Sadr tweeted: ‘I, as the official of the Iraqi National Resistance, give an order to the readiness of the Mujahideen, especially the Imam Mahdi Army and the Promised Today Brigade and whoever commands our order from the national disciplined factions to be fully prepared to protect Iraq.’
The Mahdi Army was Iraq’s largest Shi’a militia until its disbanding in 2008. Today graffiti reading ‘death to America’ could be seen painted on the ground in Baghdad. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has already warned that a harsh ‘retaliation is waiting’ for the US after the airstrike at Baghdad Airport.
He described Soleimani, who was Iran’s second in command, as the ‘international face of resistance’ and declared three days of public mourning for the general. Iran has also summoned the Swiss charges d’affaires, who represents US interests in Tehran, to protest the killing.
The country’s state television called Trump’s order to kill Soleimani ‘the biggest miscalculation by the US’ since the Second World War.
Over the last two decades, Soleimani had assembled a network of powerful and heavily armed allies stretching all the way to southern Lebanon, on Israel’s doorstep. The Defense Department said it killed the general because he ‘was actively developing plans to attack American diplomats and service members in Iraq and throughout the region.’
It also accused Soleimani of approving the orchestrated violent protests at the US Embassy in Baghdad earlier this week. Trump, who is currently holidaying on his estate in Palm Beach, Florida, sent out a tweet of an American flag after the airstrike.
