US denies latest airstrikes targeting Iraqi militia in Baghdad – as it happened

Hundreds of thousands of people are expected to line the streets of Baghdad today for the funeral procession of Qassem Suleimani, the Iranian general killed in a US drone attack, writes our Middle East-based correspondent, Michael Safi.

Suleimani will also be honoured with processions in the holy Shia cities of Karbala and Najaf on Saturday, Iranian officials said, before his remains are taken to Iran for a prayer ceremony in Tehran and a burial in his hometown.

The funeral comes against a backdrop of extremely high tension in Baghdad where militais reported airstrikes on another convoy of vehicles on Saturday morning killed at least five people. The US has denied responsibility.

We’re closing the blog now but you read Michael’s full report here.

You can also read my colleague Mario Koran’s summary of the tumultuous events of the last 24 hours here.

Thanks for reading.

The statement from the US-led coalition, which is in Iraq and Syria to fight Islamic State, was tweeted out by a spokesman for Operation Inherent Resolve, Colonel Myles B Caggins.

Both Iraq’s umbrella grouping of Shia militias, the Popular Mobilisation Forces, and
Iraqi state television said the airstrikes had taken place and that they were carried out by the US.

The US-led coalition in Iraq says it did not carry out Saturday’s airstrikes near Taj stadium in Baghdad that killed several people, a spokesman has said, according to Reuters.

Hopefully we can expand on this soon.

Reuters has some interesting background about what could have led to the killing of Suleimani. The news agency reports that in mid-October, the Revolutionary Guards general met Iraqi Shia militia allies “at a villa on the banks of the Tigris river, looking across at the US embassy complex in Baghdad”.

At the meeting, Suleimani told his Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis and other powerful militia leaders to step up attacks on US targets in the country using sophisticated new weapons provided by Iran, two militia commanders and two security sources briefed on the gathering told Reuters.

The meeting came as anti-Iranian protests were gathering strength in Iraq and the reports claims Suleimani wanted to up the ante against the US in order to provoke a response and turn the Iraqi protests against Washington.

This is the full report here.

Lack of official confirmation about the latest strikes means we’re feeling our way as to exactly what happened.

Newsweek says it has been told by Pentagon officials that the attack was on the Imam Ali Brigades, an Iraqi Shia militia with ties to Iran. There was a “high probability” that the strike resulted in the death of the brigades leader, Newsweek says, adding that it was a US operation.

Another thing to note on the new strikes is that a US government source has said it wasn’t an American operation.

Associated Press, quoting an anonymous official, said it “was not an American military attack”.

It’s only one anonymous source so we have to be cautious. Interesting though.

Thanks to the US team. I’m Martin Farrer taking over the blog.

There is a little bit more information about the airstrikes carried out on targets in Iraq early on Saturday morning local time that reportedly killed five members of Iranian-backed militia near Taj stadium in Baghdad.

Although there is no official confirmation of the details, Iraq’s Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMUs) umbrella grouping of paramilitary groups have denied that senior leaders were killed. It says the vehicles were carrying medics. convoy of medics, not senior leaders as reported in some media, according to a statement reported by Reuters.

The statement says: “Initial sources confirm that the strike targeted a convoy of Popular Mobilisation Forces medics near Taji stadium in Baghdad.”

Reuters goes on to quote an Iraqi army source saying that six people were killed in the strikes – not five – and that three were critically wounded.

That does it for the live blog here on the west coast, but before I sign off and hand over the wheel to my colleagues in Australia, let’s take a look back at a very busy Friday.

Here are some highlights from the afternoon.

• Earlier in the day Donald Trump defended the drone strike that killed Qassem Suleimani, Iran’s top general, claiming in a short statement to have taken the action required to stop a war. On the contrary, Majid Takht Ravanchi, the Iranian ambassador to the United Nations told CNN the US has started the war — and it can expect “harsh revenge.”
• Meanwhile, the US is sending nearly 3,000 more army troops to the Middle East to squelch reprisals expected in the region.
• Late in the afternoon reports surfaced of a fresh US airstrike which is believed to have hit a pro-Iran group of soldiers north of Baghdad. Details have been slowly trickling out, but still unconfirmed are the identities of the deceased.
• And earlier in the afternoon Trump stumped at an Evangelical megachurch in Florida, where he lauded yesterday’s airstrike and touted actions he couched as his efforts to protect religious freedoms and Evangelical values. Reporter Richard Luscombe was on the scene reporting from Miami.
• Finally, state department officials are trying to bolster claims from the president and the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, that the killing of Suleimani stopped imminent attacks and was therefore an act of self-defence. “There were things he could do that nobody else could do,” a US official said of Suleimani. “He was not a decentralized manager; he was a hands-on, down-to-the-details manager. And we are not safe in the region as long as Iran is pursuing this general strategy, but we are safer without him than we are with him.”

In newly aired interview, the Iranian ambassador to the United Nations, Majid Takht Ravanchi, said the US has already started a war by assassinating one of Iran’s top generals and promised the country will exact “harsh revenge”.

“We cannot just close our eyes to what happened last night,” the ambassador told CNN. “Definitely there will revenge. There will be harsh revenge...the time, the place, will be decided by Iran.”

US officials are already bracing for retaliatory action.

“The Pentagon ordered 3,000 reinforcements to the region, diplomats were reportedly told to pack their bags in case of sudden evacuation, and the US secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, called his counterparts around the world to try to persuade them the US was “committed to de-escalation”, the Guardian wrote earlier today.

Read more here:

Along with the California representative Ro Khanna, the Vermont senator and presidential candidate Bernie Sanders today announced legislation that would prohibit any funding for offensive military force in or against Iran without prior congressional approval.

“I am introducing a bill with Rep Khanna to stop Donald Trump from illegally taking us to war against Iran,” Sanders wrote on Twitter.

“It’s working-class kids who will have to fight and die in a disastrous new Middle East conflict – not the children of billionaires.”

In the wake of the strike that killed Iran’s top general, and a more recent offensive that claimed the lives of five yet-to-be-identified members of an Iran-backed militia, law enforcement officials in several major US cities are advising residents to remain watchful for retaliation.

Guardian reporter Edward Helmore observes that officials in New York and Los Angeles have yet to encounter credible threats, but are remaining vigilant against potential threats.

“You see something, say something,” the New York City mayor, Bill de Blasio, said on Twitter.

Helmore noted:

In November, a ‘sleeper agent’ of Hezbollah, the Iran-backed Lebanese group listed by US authorities as a foreign terrorist organization, was sentenced to 40 years in prison by a federal court over plans to conduct terrorist attacks around New York.

Prosecutors claimed that Ali Kourani was “recruited, trained and deployed by Hezbollah’s Islamic Jihad Organization” and had spent “years conducting surveillance on the city’s critical infrastructure, federal buildings, international airports, and even daycare centers”.

The Associated Press has reported new details on the latest airstrike in Iraq which it attributes to an Iraqi official who says the strike hit two cars and killed five members of the Iran-backed militia they were carrying. The unnamed official said the identities of those killed are unknown.

The salvo comes a day after a US drone strike that killed top Iranian general Gen Qassem Suleimani – an act of aggression which Iran has promised to avenge.

Early reports have emerged on a fresh airstrike that took place in Baghdad and the details in the past hour appeared increasingly credible.

Reuters reports: “Airstrikes targeting Iraq’s Popular Mobilisation Forces umbrella grouping of Iran-backed Shi’ite militias near camp Taji north of Baghdad have killed six people and critically wounded three, an Iraqi army source said late on Friday.

Two of the three vehicles making up a militia convoy were found burned, the source said, as well as six burned corpses. The strikes took place at 1.12am local time, he said.”

Here’s more from the Trump event. Richard Luscombe, reporting from Miami:

Some of Trump’s biggest cheers came when he moved on to topics such as abortion and the “hard left’s” perceived war on religious freedom, and freedom of speech.

“We believe in the right to life,” he said, prompting lengthy cheers, and seemingly overlooking his own conversion from his 1999 position of being pro-choice.

“There is no issue that Democrats have become more extreme [on] than the issue of life, he said, claiming to have asked Congress to prohibit late-term abortion and that he had issued an executive order stopping taxpayer money going to fetal tissue research.

“We will not allow faithful Americans to be bullied by the hard left,” Trump said. “Very soon I’ll be taking action in our schools to protects students’ first amendment rights to pray.”

Using words carefully chosen to fire up his churchgoing audience, Trump accused Democrats of waging a “crusade” against religious freedom.

“The extreme left in America is... trying to replace God with socialism,” he said. “In America, we don’t worship government, we worship God. Since 2016 the left hasn’t given up on their religious crusade against religion. Democrats have worked to remove the words “So help me God” from the oath. Not going to happen. Not as long I’m here.”

Trump has now been speaking for one hour.