By Nkiruka Nnorom with agency report
Saudi Arabia and the US have carried out joint strikes against Iran-backed militias in Iraq, in a potential escalation of the Middle East conflict.
This came as Iran’s semi-official Mehr news agency said at least four members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, IRGC, were killed in the joint attack.
US Central Command (Centcom) said the strikes were against “Iran-aligned terrorists that the IRGC directed to attack US forces and Saudi energy infrastructure”.
Iraq’s paramilitary Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), which is dominated by Iran-backed Shia militias, said at least 20 of its members had been killed in US-Saudi strikes on its bases.
It came hours after Centcom said Iran had launched missiles at US forces in the Middle East in an attempted surprise attack, ending a lull in hostilities. The US said the Iranian attack occurred at 17:45 EDT (21:45 GMT) on Tuesday, with all missiles successfully intercepted.
The IRGC said it had targeted a US air base and a command centre in Jordan in response to the acts of aggression of the American child-killing army.
It also said that naval forces had struck three oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz after they ignored warnings and sailed along what it described as an unsafe and illegal route through the vital Gulf waterway.
When asked by a Fox News correspondent yesterday about the Iranian attack on Jordan, US President, Donald Trump, said in an expletive-laden response that US forces would be “hitting them hard”, adding: “They’re going to get a beating.”
Centcom said the joint US-Saudi strikes hit multiple terrorist logistics and weapons sites across eastern Iraq in a strong response to over 30 IRGC-directed aerial drone attacks in the last 72 hours.
It called the drone attacks unwarranted and added that they had failed.
“The IRGC and its terrorist proxies must cease these attacks to avoid further US military response,” the Centcom statement said.
A spokesman for the Saudi Defence Ministry, Maj-Gen Turki al-Maliki, also accused Iran-backed terrorist militias of launching drones from Iraqi territory at oil facilities in the Eastern and Riyadh regions on Monday and Tuesday.
He said Saudi Arabia, under its right to self-defence had responded by conducting strikes against specific targets belonging to those militias.
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