The U.S. State Department is urging all U.S. citizens to leave Iraq after the New Year’s Eve attack on the embassy in Baghdad by Hashed al-Shaabi, a pro-Iranian paramilitary group, that caused extensive damage to the property.
“On December 31, 2019, the Embassy suspended public consular services, until further notice, as a result of damage done by Iranian-backed terrorist attacks on the Embassy compound,” the State Department said in an update to its Iraq travel advisory on Wednesday.
Photos show a burned and charred reception area, smashed windows and vandalized rooms left behind by supporters and members of the Iranian-trained Hashed al-Shaabi military network, also known as the Popular Mobilization Forces. No deaths or serious injuries have been reported, and the embassy was not evacuated.
In response, the Pentagon deployed 750 paratroopers from the 82nd Airborne, based at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to the region.
The travel advisory noted that the U.S. Consulate in Irbil, located in northern Iraq toward its northern border with Turkey, remains open. (The State Department said it suspended operations at its consulate in the southern city of Basrah in October 2018.)
Consulates differ from embassies in that they focus on tasks such as aiding Americans abroad and issuing passports to citizens as well as visas to foreigners.
Iraq, which shares its western border with Iran, was already at Level 4 (“Do not travel”), the highest warning level on the State Department’s travel advisory scale before the embassy attack due to years of armed conflict in the region.
Tensions began escalating on Dec. 27 when a rocket attack killed a U.S. civilian contractor in the northern city of Kirkuk. On Dec. 29., U.S. planes bombed sites tied to the militia group Kataib Hezbollah. The U.S. embassy was hit two days later.
Early Friday local time, the U.S. military conducted an airstrike at the Baghdad airport that killed Iranian Major General Qasem Soleimani. The commander of the Revolutionary Guard Corp’s elite Quds Force, Soleimani had orchestrated attacks on coalition bases in Iraq and was actively planning operations against Americans in the area, according to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
The attack marked the first time the U.S. designated the arm of another government as a terrorist organization. Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei responded Friday, saying a “forceful revenge awaits” the United States.
Contributing: Savannah Behrmann, USA TODAY
Source Article from https://www.usatoday.com/story/travel/news/2020/01/03/iraq-embassy-attack-state-department-advises-all-americans-leave/2803090001/
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