Three Kataeb Hezbollah members killed in Baghdad drone strike, militia says

A drone strike hit a car in the Iraqi capital Wednesday night, killing three members of the powerful Kataeb Hezbollah militia including a high-ranking commander, militia officials say.

The strike occurred on a main thoroughfare in the Mashtal neighborhood in eastern Baghdad. A crowd gathered as emergency response teams picked through the wreckage.

Two officials with Iranian-backed militias in Iraq say that one of those killed was Wissam Mohammed “Abu Bakr” al-Saadi, the commander in charge of Kataeb Hezbollah’s operations in Syria. The officials speak on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorized to speak to journalists.

The strike came days after the US military launched an air assault on dozens of sites in Iraq and Syria used by Iranian-backed militias and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard in retaliation for a drone strike that killed three US troops in Jordan in late January.