The Pentagon has suggested that Kataib Hezbollah had “footprints” in the drone strike that killed three US service members.
Let’s take a closer look at groups.
Kataib Hezbollah is an elite Iraqi armed group close to Iran that was founded in the aftermath of the 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq.
The government considers the border between Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon to be a Western construct, and considers U.S. forces in Iraq to be foreign occupiers.
The group quickly gained a reputation in the 2000s for carrying out deadly attacks against military and diplomatic targets, using a combination of snipers, rocket and mortar attacks, and roadside bombs.
The United States designated the group as a terrorist organization in 2009, and its leader, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, was killed in a U.S. drone strike at Baghdad’s international airport in 2020.
Kataib Hezbollah, a shadowy group with no publicly disclosed leadership, has thousands of fighters and an arsenal of drones, rockets and short-range ballistic missiles, Iraqi officials and the group say. said the member.
It is the most powerful armed group in Iraq’s Islamic Resistance Movement and is affiliated with a hardline Shi’ite armed group that has claimed more than 150 attacks on U.S. forces since the start of the Israel-Hamas war.
At the same time, it has formed several battalions of the Iraqi Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF). The PMF is an armed group originally established in 2014 to fight Islamic State and later recognized as an official security force.
Fighters receive state salaries, and members of Kataib Hezbollah, including US-designated terrorists, hold senior positions in the PMF.
Although technically under the command of Iraq’s prime minister, the group often operates outside the chain of command and has rebelled and challenged government statements calling for an end to attacks on U.S. forces.
The United States has attacked Kataib Hezbollah positions, bases, and training and logistics hubs several times over the years.
On Wednesday, it attacked multiple targets in the Jurf al-Sahar stronghold, 50 kilometers south of Baghdad, in retaliation for drone and missile attacks.