Clashes erupted in Baghdad on Sunday between Iraqi security troops and an Iran-backed Shiite militia, leaving one police officer dead.
Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al Sudani has ordered an investigation after members of the militant group stormed a government office to reinstate a dismissed official by force, security authorities said.
The militants, later identified as members of brigades in the Popular Mobilisation Forces affiliated with Kataib Hezbollah, entered a building linked to the Ministry of Agriculture where the new director was holding a meeting with employees. The incident caused “panic among the employees, who immediately called for security assistance”, the Interior Ministry said.
When units of the Federal Police and Emergency Response Teams arrived, they “came under direct fire from the gunmen”, it said. A number of security troops were injured and at least 14 militants arrested, it said.
Videos on social media showed members of Iraqi security forces rushing to the scene in Baghdad's southern neighbourhood of Saydiyah, with gunshots heard in the background. Other videos showed injured security forces on stretchers receiving treatment in a hospital.
The Joint Operation Command identified the arrested militants as affiliated with Brigades 45 and 46 in the PMF, an umbrella group of paramilitaries of influential Tehran-backed Shiite militias. Both brigades are affiliated with Kataib Hezbollah, according to a PMF official.
When ISIS swept through large parts of northern and western Iraq, US-trained security troops collapsed in a humiliating defeat. To face the advancing extremist militants, thousands of Shiite volunteers answered the call to arms by Iraq’s influential Shiite cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani.
At the time, the government of former prime minister Nouri Al Maliki had already formed the PMF to organise and supervise the volunteers as parallel forces. Shortly after its formation, several powerful Iran-backed Shiite militias joined the PMF. By then, some of them were fighting alongside Bashar Al Assad's forces in Syria’s civil war.
During the fight against ISIS, some of these militias were accused of human rights breaches against civilians in Sunni areas. The Iraqi government and PMF acknowledged these breaches as “individual acts”.
The US has blacklisted several PMF leaders in a bid to increase pressure on Iran's proxies in Iraq, sanctioning senior figures between 2019 and 2021 under the Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act.
Since declaring ISIS defeated in late 2017, the PMF and mainly Tehran-aligned militias have emerged as a powerful force in Iraq and grown more defiant towards the government and opposition groups.
