One of the deadliest Iranian-backed militias in Iraq has threatened to attack US troops deployed fighting the Islamic State (ISIS or ISIL) and “deal” with them as occupying forces, Britain’s Daily Telegraph reported on Monday.
The Asaib Ahl al-Haq militia, known as the League of the Righteous, issued the warning after it emerged the US has deployed several hundred marines to aid Iraqi forces as they try to retake Mosul, the report said.
“If the US administration doesn’t withdraw its forces immediately, we will deal with them as forces of occupation,” Asaib Ahl al-Haq said on its TV channel, al-Ahd.
“The forces of occupation are making a new suspicious attempt to restore their presence in the country under the pretext of fighting their own creation, Daesh,” the group said, using another name for ISIS.
It is not clear if Asaib Ahl al-Haq would actually follow through but the group played a major role in fighting Western forces after the US-led invasion in 2003.
Asaib Ahl al-Haq was responsible for the kidnapping in May 2007 of British computer expert Peter Moore and his four bodyguards, in what turned out to be one of the worst kidnap crises in modern British history.
Mr Moore was eventually released in December 2009, while his four bodyguards – Jason Creswell, Jason Swindlehurst, Alec MacLachlan, and Alan McMenemy – were killed in captivity.
Its fighters also shot down a British Lynx helicopter in Basra in 2006, killing five UK military personnel.
The militia is backed by Iran’s regime and “operates under the supervision of Qassem Suleimani, a Revolutionary Guard general in charge of most of Iran’s expeditionary missions in Syria and across the Middle East,” the Telegraph added.
Between 2006 and 2011, the group claimed responsibility for over 6,000 attacks on US forces, according to a report by the Institute for the Study of War.