The United States government has warned its citizens to leave Iraq immediately, hours after their airstrike killed a top Iranian General Qasem Soleimani.
The deceased was the leader of Iran’s elite Quds Force unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Earlier, we had reported that Soleimani was killed alongside Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the leader of Kata’ib Hezbollah also called Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) at the Baghdad International Airport in Iraq.
A security alert issued by the US embassy in Baghdad and the State Department after the airstrike called on all American citizens to leave Iraq immediately.
In its statement, the embassy said; ‘Due to heightened tensions in Iraq and the region, the US Embassy urges American citizens to heed the January 2020 Travel Advisory and depart Iraq immediately. US citizens should depart via airline while possible, and failing that, to other countries via land.’
The statement also added that US citizens should ‘not approach the embassy’, while the consulate general in Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan, would be open for appointments.
