Thousands of supporters of Iraqi armed factions called for the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, at a rally in Baghdad on Saturday to mark the 2nd anniversary of the US assassination of Iranian General Qassem Soleimani and his lieutenant Iraqi.
January 3, 2020, by order of Donald Trump, an armed drone sprayed the vehicle where Soleimani, architect of Iranian strategy in the Middle East, and Abu Mehdi al-Mouhandis, number 2 of Hachd al-Chaabi, a coalition of factions integrated into the Iraqi state, were located.
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The night attack, on a road to Baghdad international airport, had raised fears of a war between Tehran and Washington, two enemies and two powers acting in Iraq.
Thousands of demonstrators
In central Baghdad, thousands of Hachd al-Chaabi supporters, some of them with their families and their children, swept into a square closed to traffic, an AFP correspondent noted.
Large white flags bearing the insignia of Hachd but also Iraqi flags dominated the crowd.
US Terrorism Must End
“No to America!“chanted the demonstrators, some of whom brandished portraits of Soleimani and Mouhandis.”US Terrorism Must End“, could one read on a sign.
Addressing the crowd, Faleh al-Fayyad, a senior Hashd official, praised the memory of the two “martyrs“seeing in their murder”a crime against the sovereignty of Iraq“. He called again to”total withdrawal of foreign and American forces“from Iraq.
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