US Embassy in Iraq attacked by protesters

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US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo spoke with Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi and President Barham Salih separately by phone Tuesday, amid protests outside the US Embassy in Baghdad.

Hundreds of protesters have smashed windows, set fire to outbuildings and overturned vehicles outside the US Embassy in Baghdad.

US airstrikes earlier in the week, and Tuesday’s embassy attack,?have created new tensions between allies Washington and Baghdad, with Iraqi police and soldiers among those killed and wounded in the strikes.

They come at a time of unrest as mass protests across Iraq challenge the nation’s precarious government.

Protesters set a sentry box ablaze in front of the US embassy building in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad. Photo: Ameer Al Mohmmedaw/picture alliance via Getty Images

Protesters use a pipe to break the bullet-proof glass windows at the US embassy in Baghdad. Photo: Ahmad Al-Rubaye/AFP via Getty Images

A crowd of protesters demonstrate outside the US embassy in the Iraqi capital on Tuesday. Photo: Ahmad Al-Rubaye/AFP via Getty Images

Protesters damage property inside the US Embassy compound in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad. Photo: Khalid Mohammed/AP

The US embassy in Baghdad is under lock down but has not been evacuated, an embassy spokesperson told CNN, as protests continue outside the compound located in city’s Green Zone.

The US ambassador to Iraq, Matthew Tueller, is currently out on a previously scheduled vacation that started over a week ago, the spokesperson added.

Protesters have not breached the compound but parts of the walls were set on fire, a source affiliated with the embassy told CNN.

And after the strikes on Iraq and Syria, the protests were somewhat expected, the source said.

Restrictions on entry to the Green Zone, the secure?area in Baghdad that surrounds the embassy outer perimeter,?have been a little relaxed in recent years, the source added.

President Donald Trump confirmed Tuesday that US airstrikes on Sunday were a response to a recent attack that killed a US contractor.

In a tweet, he blamed Iran both for the contractor’s death and Tuesday’s attack on the embassy.

Similarly, Republican Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton said in a statement::

The US civilian contractor, who has not been named, was killed Friday in a rocket attack on a base near Kirkuk, Iraq, where US service members and civilian contractors were located.

K1 military base, which houses US troops in Kirkuk province in northern Baghdad, was attacked by several katyusha rockets, according to the Iraqi military.

This picture taken 26 December 2011 shows the Pentagon building in Washington, DC. The Pentagon, which is the headquarters of the United States Department of Defense (DOD), is the world's largest office building by floor area, with about 6,500,000 sq ft (600,000 m2), of which 3,700,000 sq ft (340,000 m2) are used as offices. Approximately 23,000 military and civilian employees and about 3,000 non-defense support personnel work in the Pentagon. AFP PHOTO (Photo credit should read STAFF/AFP/Getty Images)

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President Donald Trump has weighed in on protesters’ attempts to storm the US Embassy in Baghdad, tweeting that “Iran is orchestrating” the attack.

He called on Iraq to “use its forces to protect the embassy.”

For now, the situation in Baghdad has not escalated beyond protesters smashing the windows of the embassy and burning items outside its walls.

But the fact they were even able to get that close suggests that Iraqi security forces did not stop the demonstrators advancing on the compound, says CNN Senior International Correspondent Arwa Damon:

Iraqi Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi has called on protesters to immediately leave the area around the US Embassy in Baghdad.

He said in a statement:

?Also on Tuesday, protesters held a funeral ceremony for members of Kataib Hezbollah who were killed in US strikes on Sunday.?

While the funeral ceremony is an expression of “loyalty to the martyrs precious blood,” demonstrations should be kept away from embassy buildings which the government has a responsibility to protest and secure, said Abdul-Mahdi.

For the Iraqi government, it’s the stuff of nightmares: A proxy war between the United States and Iran in a country already wracked by protests, crippled by political paralysis and threatened by renewed terrorism.

But that war has come a step nearer with?Sunday’s US airstrikes against a pro-Iranian militia in Iraq.

The target of the US airstrikes is a group called Kataib Hezbollah, one of the most radical Shia militia in Iraq, with close links to the Iranian Revolutionary Guards. US officials hold it responsible for a growing number of rocket attacks against US facilities in Iraq. The death of a US contractor in one such attack last week was the last straw for the Trump administration.

Kataib Hezbollah is militantly anti-American. In 2017 and 2018, its fighters in Syria tried?to attack the US-supported garrison at al-Tanf?on the Iraqi border. Earlier this month it boasted of the failure of the “Saudi-American-Zionist axis of evil.”

It has provided hundreds of fighters for the Assad regime in Syria – part of a broader Iranian effort to help stamp out the insurgency there – and is an important element in Iranian efforts to extend its influence through northern Iraq and into Syria. The US strikes, notably, were against targets along the main route between Iran and Syria.

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Fighters from the Kataib Hezbollah, or Hezbollah Brigades militia, inspect the destruction at their headquarters in the aftermath of a U.S. airstrike in Qaim, Iraq, Monday, Dec. 30, 2019. The Iranian-backed militia said Monday that the death toll from U.S. military strikes in Iraq and Syria against its fighters has risen to 25, vowing to exact revenge for the "aggression of evil American ravens." (AP Photo)

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The US carried out airstrikes in Iraq and Syria on Sunday,?targeting five facilities controlled by Iraq’s?Popular Mobilization Unit (PMU) member group, Kataib Hezbollah.?

At least 25 people were killed and 51 wounded in the strikes,?the first significant US military response to Kataib Hezbollah’s deadly rocket attacks on US-Iraqi targets in recent weeks.

Protesters set a sentry box ablaze in front of the US embassy building in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad.

US officials said the strikes were carried out with F-15 Strike Eagle fighter planes and targeted Kataib Hezbollah locations, including weapons storage facilities and command and control locations.

The Pentagon said the locations were used “to plan and execute attacks” on joint US-Iraq forces.

The airstrikes and protests have created new tensions between allies Washington and Baghdad, with Iraqi police and soldiers also hit in the strikes. They come at a time of unrest as mass protests across Iraq challenge the nation’s precarious government.

Baghdad warned Monday that its relations with the US were also at risk following the strikes.

A blaze outside the US embassy in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, on Tuesday.

Protesters attempted to storm the US embassy in Baghdad on Tuesday, scaling the walls and forcing the gates of the compound, as hundreds demonstrated against?American airstrikes on an Iran-backed militia group in Iraq.

Video and photos on social media show demonstrators smashing the windows of the embassy and burning items outside its walls.

The pro-Iranian demonstrators were mostly from Iraq’s?Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), a coalition of predominantly Shiite militias, and three leaders of powerful militia groups were also seen at the protest.

The US carried out five airstrikes in Iraq and Syria on Sunday,?targeting facilities controlled by PMU member group Kataib Hezbollah.?

At least 25 people were killed and 51 wounded in the strikes,?the first significant US military response to Kataib Hezbollah’s deadly rocket attacks on US-Iraqi targets in recent weeks.

Several thousand Iraqi protesters, waving national flags and banners of the Hashed al-Shaabi, a mostly Shiite network of local armed groups trained and armed by powerful neighbour Iran, demonstrate outside the US embassy in Baghdad on December 31, 2019, breaching its outer wall and chanting "Death to America!" in anger over weekend air strikes that killed pro-Iran fighters. - It was the first time in years protesters have been able to reach the US embassy in the Iraqi capital, which is sheltered behind a series of checkpoints in the high-security Green Zone. (Photo by AHMAD AL-RUBAYE / AFP) (Photo by AHMAD AL-RUBAYE/AFP via Getty Images)

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