Shaabi

U.S. forces targeted sites used by Iran-backed militants in Iraq early Wednesday, U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced, carrying out strikes that Iraqi sources said left two people dead.

The strikes came just days after U.S. troops in western Iraq were targeted with ballistic missiles and rockets in an attack the Pentagon blamed on militants supported by Tehran.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan sent a letter on Nov. 10 to Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Al-Kadhimi in which he condemned in the "strongest terms" a terror attack on the home of the Iraqi premier.

Six Iraqi security personnel and three civilians were killed in an ambush Nov. 21 carried out by ISIL north of Baghdad, police and a local official said.    

A police source said a roadside bomb hit a car and jihadists opened fire on a rescue team of policemen and state-aligned paramilitary forces when they arrived at the scene, about 200 kilometers (120 miles) from the capital.    

At least eight fighters of the pro-Iranian paramilitary Hashd al-Shaabi have been killed in eastern Syria, the Observatory said.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said that the planes targeted positions belonging to pro-Iranian militias in the Boukamal area, near the border with Iraq.

The Middle East has once again become the focus of the whole world since Jan. 3, 2020.

Turkey called on all parties to act with common sense and avoid steps that will fuel tension, the presidential spokesman said on Jan. 3 amid the fresh U.S.-Iran row.

Thousands more U.S. troops were ordered to the Middle East on Jan. 3 after the United States assassinated Iran's military mastermind and Tehran promised "severe revenge."    

President Donald Trump said top Iranian general Qasem Soleimani was "terminated" when he was on the verge of attacking U.S. diplomats but he insisted that Washington is not seeking to topple Iran's government.

U.S. Defense Secretary Mark Esper said on Dec. 31 that he has decided to immediately dispatch a battalion of the 82nd Airborne Division to Iraq following violent protests at the American embassy in Baghdad.