{"id":4031,"date":"2026-03-05T00:57:06","date_gmt":"2026-03-05T00:57:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/4031\/"},"modified":"2026-03-05T00:57:06","modified_gmt":"2026-03-05T00:57:06","slug":"strike-kills-two-pro-iran-fighters-in-southern-iraq-sources","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/4031\/","title":{"rendered":"Strike kills two pro-Iran fighters in southern Iraq: sources"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n Several Iran-backed armed groups, including Kataeb Hezbollah, have said they will not stay “neutral” in the conflict [Getty]<\/p>\n

Two fighters from the powerful Iran-backed Kataeb Hezbollah<\/a> group were killed on Wednesday in a strike near their base in Iraq, as the war in the Middle East raged across multiple fronts.<\/p>\n

Attacks were also reported in Baghdad and Erbil throughout the day, as the US embassy urged its citizens to leave the country as soon as they were able.<\/p>\n

Two sources from Kataeb Hezbollah told AFP that the two fighters were killed when a strike hit their vehicle<\/a> near the group’s main bastion, the Jurf al-Nasr base.<\/p>\n

One source called the attack a “Zionist-US strike”.<\/p>\n

The Jurf al-Nasr base was the first Iraqi target of strikes blamed on Israel and the US, which later expanded to other areas.<\/p>\n

Since the start of the war, the strikes have killed 14 fighters, mostly from Kataeb Hezbollah.<\/p>\n

Iraq, which has recently regained a sense of stability but has long been a proxy battleground between the US and Iran, had said it did not want to be dragged into the war. But it has not been spared.<\/p>\n

Several Iran-backed armed groups – known as the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, to which Kataeb Hezbollah also belongs – have said they will not stay “neutral” and have claimed dozens of drone attacks on US bases.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, three drones were shot down throughout the day near Baghdad International Airport, which hosts a US diplomatic facility and previously housed US-led coalition troops.<\/p>\n

In recent days, angry pro-Iran protesters tried to storm the capital’s fortified Green Zone, which hosts the US embassy and key government buildings, but security forces dispersed them.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, the US embassy urged its nationals to “leave Iraq now” if it was safe for them to do so.<\/p>\n

Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region, which hosts US troops, has been the main target of drone attacks, the majority of which were intercepted by air defences<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Lound bangs were heard on Wednesday in Erbil, the region’s capital, which also houses a major US consulate complex.<\/p>\n

An AFP journalist reported that windows in a few houses were shattered by the force of one blast, and that debris from a drone or missile shot down by air defences had fallen on a residential neighbourhood.<\/p>\n

Attacks also hit Kurdish Iranian fighters in the autonomous region who are opposed to the Islamic republic.<\/p>\n

The exiled Kurdistan Freedom Party (PAK) told AFP a strike by Iran killed one of its fighters.<\/p>\n

Iran’s Guards later said that the bases of “anti-revolutionary groups were hit with success by three missiles”.<\/p>\n

Late Wednesday night, a drone and missile attack hit a camp for the families of members of the exiled Komala party, but no casualties were reported, party official Mohammed Hakimi told AFP, blaming the attack on Iran.<\/p>\n

Iraq’s Kurdish region hosts camps and rear-bases operated by several Iranian Kurdish rebel groups that have repeatedly faced cross-border strikes from Iran, which has long accused them of serving Western or Israeli interests.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Several Iran-backed armed groups, including Kataeb Hezbollah, have said they will not stay “neutral” in the conflict [Getty]…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4032,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[14],"tags":[34,94,2837,2836,73],"class_list":["post-4031","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-iraq","tag-iran","tag-iraq","tag-iraqi-kurdistan","tag-kataeb-hezbollah","tag-us-israel-war-on-iran"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116173854668895203","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4031","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4031"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4031\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4032"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4031"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4031"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4031"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}