US asks citizens to leave Iraq immediately

January 03, 2020 15:05

The US Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq, has asked its citizens to leave the country immediately. The advisory says: "Due to heightened tensions in Iraq, US Embassy urges American citizens to heed the January 2020 travel advisory and depart Iraq immediately. US citizens should depart via airline while possible, and failing that, to other countries via land."

General Qasem Soleimani, the powerful commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards, was killed in a precision US air strike in Iraq ordered by President Donald Trump, the Pentagon announced on Friday, dramatically escalating tensions in the strategic Gulf region.

General Soleimani, the head of Iran's elite al-Quds force and architect of its regional security apparatus, was killed following a US airstrike at Baghdad's international airport on Friday.

The strike also killed the deputy chief of Iraq's powerful Hashed al-Shaabi paramilitary force. The Pentagon confirmed the death of Soleimani, 62, in Iraq, saying the strike was carried out at the direction of Trump.

"At the direction of the president, the US military has taken decisive defensive action to protect US personnel abroad by killing Qasem Soleimani, the head of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force, a US-designated Foreign Terrorist Organisation,' the Pentagon said.

Following Soleimani's death, President Trump, now on vacation in Florida, did not comment immediately, except for tweeting an image of the US flag. The strike comes days after Trump threatened Tehran after Iraqi supporters of pro-Iranian regime factions laid siege to the US embassy in Baghdad, following deadly American air strikes on a hardline Hashed faction.

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