China on Sunday issued a safety warning to its citizens living in the US, advising them to stay alert and take precautions before visiting public places in the wake of escalating tensions between Iran and America following the killing of Iran's top military commander Qassem Soleimani.
US Embassy and Air Force base in Iraq were the target of separate rocket attacks just a day after US took down Iran's military commander Qasem Soleimani. Two rocket missiles were fired at the embassy in Baghdad. While US Air Base is located in Balad.
The body of top Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani, who was killed in a US airstrike ordered by President Donald Trump, will reach Tehran after funeral processions in the Iraqi capital Baghdad and the cities of Najaf and Karbala, a media report said.
In what is a second US attack on Iraqi soil in as many days, 6 Popular Mobilisation Force (PMF) locally known as Hashd al-Shaabi paramilitary personnel have been killed, local media reports are claiming. The development comes a day after US killed top Iranian General Qasem Soleiman in a strike at the Baghdad airport.
The United States has urged US citizens to leave Iraq “immediately." A State Department statement on Friday cites “heightened tensions in Iraq and the region." Iran has vowed "harsh retaliation" after a US airstrike killed Iran's top military commander General Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad.
Dozens of angry Iraqi Shiite militia supporters broke into the U.S. Embassy compound in Baghdad on Tuesday after smashing a main door and setting fire to a reception area, prompting tear gas and sounds of gunfire. An Associated Press reporter at the scene saw flames rising from inside the compound and at least three U.S. soldiers on the roof of the main embassy building.
The attack came as anti-government demonstrators occupied parts of Jumhuriya, Sinak and Ahar bridges in a standoff with security forces.
At least 320 people have died and more than 15,000 others have been injured in the ongoing unrest, including members of security forces, according to figures issued by the Iraqi High Commission for Human Rights.
The tunnel passes under Baghdad’s Tahrir Square, the epicenter of the protests where thousands of people are camped out in a giant sit-in that has taken on the feel of a vibrant mini-city.
A month-long protest in Iraq which is widely being considered as the biggest in the country since the fall of Saddam Hussein, has already claimed over 300 lives while over 15,000 have been injured.
Anti-government protesters in Iraq stormed the fourth bridge Wednesday in central Baghdad, where security forces pushed them back with batons and tear gas, wounding dozens, and a medic was killed near another bridge while aiding demonstrators.
The new violence brought the number of demonstrators killed to 49 in two days of protesting, according to an Associated Press tally. The semi-official Iraq High Commission for Human Rights, which accounts for violence in additional cities in southern Iraq, put the death toll at 63.
The army raided an ISIS hideout northwest of Salahudin's capital Tikrit, some 170 km north of Baghdad, Abdul Muhsin Hatem, commander of Salahudin operations, said in a statement.
Ali al-Bayati, a member of the Iraqi Independent High Commission for Human Rights (IHCHR), told reporters on Thursday night that the toll of violence that accompanied the protests during the three days in Baghdad and some provinces rose to 26, including two security personnel, reports Xinhua news agency.
As many as 31 Iraqi pilgrims were killed and 100 others injured in a stampede in Karbala. The incident happened when a walkway collapsed, setting off a stampede as thousands of Shiite Muslims marked Muhurram.
The Israeli military said one of its drones "fell inside southern Lebanon during routine operations".
Eight Islamic State (IS) militants were killed on Sunday in an airstrike by the US-led coalition aircraft in Iraq's Nineveh province while security forces captured nine IS extremists in Salahudin province, the Iraqi military said.
The girls, Staish Azad Khalil (2) and Naveen Yaseen (7), were critical and would not have survived long without medical attention, doctors said. Upon their arrival recently to Sir Ganga Ram Hospital (SGRH) from Erbil, where they were living in a camp for internally displaced people, the children were evaluated, the hospital said in a statement.
Union Food Processing Industries Minister Harsimrat Kaur Badal on Monday said that all the seven Punjabi youth, who are stranded in Erbil in Iraq for the last eight months after being duped by a travel agent, would return to their homeland on July 27.
Also in the province, two civilians were wounded in a roadside bomb explosion on the edges of the city of Jalawla, some 135 km from Baghdad, al-Saadi said, adding the roadside bomb was apparently planted by IS militants.
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