Iraqi militant who worked with Tehran killed
A veteran Iraqi militant who was closely allied with Iran and rose to be a senior militia commander during the war against so-called Islamic State was killed in the US strike against Iran’s top general.
Abu Mahdi al-muhandis was the deputy commander of the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), an umbrella group of mostly Shia paramilitaries.
He was also the founder of the Kataeb Hezbollah, or Hezbollah Brigades.
Theusblamedthegroup, which is separate from the Lebanese Hezbollah movement, for a rocket attack in northern Iraq last week that killed a US contractor.
The militias, many of which are backed by Iran and trace their roots back to the Shia insurgency against US forces after the 2003 invasion, mobilised in 2014 when Islamic
State terrorists swept across northern and western Iraq.
Muhandis, who had spent much of his life as a secretive operative in Iran’s regional shadow wars, emerged as a public face of the force, a tall man with a grey beard and thick glasses who was often seen on the frontlines directing his fighters by radio.
He was killed in the air strike at Baghdad’s international airport at about midnight along with General Qassem Soleimani, the commander of Iran’s Quds force and the architect of its regional military alliances.
Also killed was Muhandis’ son-in-law Mohammed Rida al-jaberi.
The PMF said Muhandis’ body was destroyed beyond recognition. The 56-yearold militant began his political life with the Dawa party, a Shia Islamist group that was crushed by Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in the 1970s.
Like others in the party, including the future prime minister Nouri al-maliki, Muhandis fled abroad and joined forces with Iran.
He spent the next few decades in Kuwait and Iran, working closely with the Revolutionary Guard, especially during the 1980-88 Iran-iraq war.
During his stay in Iran in the 1980s and 1990s, he worked with the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq and its military wing, the Badr Brigades.