The US-led coalition “has become a factor of instability”, says the prime minister's military spokesman
Repeated US attacks on Iranian-backed groups in Iraq are putting pressure on the government in Baghdad to end the US-led coalition's mission in the country, the prime minister's military spokesman said on Thursday.
The US military said a strike on Wednesday killed a commander of Kataib Hezbollah, an Iran-backed group in Iraq that the Pentagon has blamed for attacking its troops.
Spokesman Yahya Rasool said in a statement that the US-led coalition “has become a factor of instability and threatens to entangle Iraq in the cycle of conflict.”
In Washington, the Pentagon said it had notified the Iraqi government about the attack shortly after it occurred.
Talks between the two countries began in January on the future of the coalition. But less than 24 hours later, three American soldiers were killed in an attack in Jordan that the United States says was carried out by Iranian-backed groups in Syria and Iraq and talks have since paused.
Iraq and the United States will resume negotiations on the future of the US-led international military coalition in the country on February 11, the Iraqi military spokesman said in a statement.
Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein called for a resumption of talks in a phone call with US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken on Tuesday.
Any discussion about the future of the coalition is expected to take months, if not longer, and the outcome is unclear.
The US-led international military coalition in Iraq was created to fight Daesh. The United States has 2,500 troops in Iraq, advising and assisting local forces to prevent a resurgence of the group.
Since the war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza began in October, Iraq and Syria have seen almost daily attacks between hardline groups backed by Iran and US forces stationed in the region.
A series of US strikes in Iraq and Syria last week killed more than 40 militants, the Pentagon said.
At the time, Iraq's Popular Mobilization Forces, a state security force that includes Iranian-backed groups, said 16 of its members had been killed, including fighters and medics. The government had said civilians were among the 16 dead.
In Syria, those strikes killed 23 people who had been guarding the targeted sites, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, which reports on the war in Syria.
