Military option against US forces still on table

AhlulBayt News Agency (ABNA): Leader of Asa'ib Ahl al-Haq Resistance Movement Qais Khazali underlined that the group is still planning for military attacks against the American forces in Iraq after the US assassination of two key Iranian and Iraqi commanders.

"The option of military response to the US forces in Iraq is still on the table," Khazali said in an interview with the Arabic-language al-Ahd news channel on Saturday.

He noted that the administration of US President Donald Trump has crossed all redlines in Iraq and assassination of IRGC Qods Force Commander Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani and Deputy Commander of Iraq's Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis was a big crime.

"The resistance groups are at present very powerful quantitatively and qualitatively and the number of our forces has surpassed 10,000 and our missile power, in addition to other equipment, is very high," Khazali said.

Lieutenant General Soleimani was assassinated in a US drone strike on Baghdad International Airport in Iraq on January 3.

The airstrike also martyred al-Muhandis. The two were martyred in an American airstrike that targeted their vehicle on the road to the airport.

Five Iranian and five Iraqi militaries were martyred by missiles fired by the US drone at Baghdad International Airport.

On January 8, the IRGC Aerospace Force started heavy ballistic missile attacks on US Ein Al-Assad airbase in Southwestern Iraq near the border with Syria and a US operated airbase in Erbil in retaliation for the US assassination of General Soleimani.

Ein Al-Assad is an airbase with a 4km runway at 188m altitude from sea levels, which is the main and the largest US airbase in Iraq. Early reports said the radar systems and missile defense shields in Ein Al-Assad failed to operate and intercept the Iranian missiles. Unofficial reports said the US army's central radar systems at Ein Al-Assad had been jammed by electronic warfare.

The second IRGC reprisal attack targeted a US military base near Erbil airport in Iraqi Kurdistan Region in the second leg of "Martyr Soleimani" reprisal operation.

Iraq said the attacks had not taken any toll from its army men stationed at these two bases. The US army had blocked entrance into Ein Al-Assad to everyone, including the Iraqi army.

It was the first direct attack on the US army ever since world war two.

The IRGC officials said none of the missiles had been intercepted.

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