WASHINGTON DC: The United States military says it carried out a drone strike on a vehicle in Baghdad, killing a leader of an Iranian-backed militant group.

U.S. Central Command, which oversees U.S. military operations in the Middle East, said the strike on Tuesday killed a commander of the militant group Kataib Hezbollah who was “responsible for directly planning and participating in attacks on U.S. forces in the region.”

Two U.S. officials confirmed to VOA that the commander was operations officer Wisam Mohammad al-Saedi. Photos on social media allegedly showed his Iraqi identification card that was pulled from his body.

VOA had earlier reported the United States military was involved in an airstrike against a high-value target in the Middle East but had not identified al-Saedi by name.

Video shared on social media showed a vehicle engulfed in flames on a Baghdad highway.

The U.S. strike was in response to the almost 170 drone, rocket and missile attacks against U.S. forces in the Middle East since mid-October, one of which killed three U.S. service members and wounded dozens more in northern Jordan last week.

A wave of U.S. airstrikes in Iraq and Syria on Friday pounded targets associated with Iranian-backed militias responsible for the attacks. The strikes targeted three locations in Iraq, as well as another four in Syria, and they destroyed more than 80 individual targets, ranging from command-and-control centers and intelligence hubs to missile and drone storage facilities, according to the latest U.S. assessments.

But while U.S. officials have defended the strikes as necessary following a drone attack that killed three U.S. soldiers at a base in Jordan last month, Iraqi officials have voiced increased anger, summoning the U.S. chargé d’affaires in Baghdad to protest. They have charged that some of the U.S. strikes hit elements of Iraq’s own security forces.

(VOA)