Tear Gas, Clashes as Unrest Continues outside US Embassy in Iraq

Pro-Iran militias have stormed the US embassy in Baghdad for a second day, and set fires to tyres in front of it, causing a wave of clashes against the US forces that, in return, fired tear gas to disperse those militias.

The clashes left at least six militants injured and suffocated following demands for American blood in retaliation for airstrikes on Iraq.

US President Donald Trump's reinforcements were engaged early today when tear gas was fired to disperse those who had spent the night outside the main gates. Several ambulances arrived to ferry those stricken by the gas.

Some 50 tents and sit-in camps were set up in front of the embassy's gates, demanding that the US withdraw from Iraq.

This morning, the crowds drew closer to the single wall separating them and the larger diplomatic compound, setting US flags on fire and eventually the wall of the compound itself.

Defense Secretary Mark Esper announced yesterday that “in response to recent events” in Iraq, and at Trump's direction, he authorized the immediate deployment of an infantry battalion of about 750 soldiers from the Army's 82nd Airborne Division at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, to the Middle East. He did not specify their destination.

According to a US official source, Esper said that additional soldiers from the 82nd Airborne's quick-deployment brigade, known officially as its Immediate Response Force, are prepared to deploy over the next several days.

It is noteworthy that thousands of demonstrators,  many of them Iran-backed militants, protested yesterday in front of the US Embassy in Baghdad, calling for the closure of the embassy and expelling the Ambassador of Washington.

The breach followed American airstrikes Sunday that killed 25 fighters of an Iran-backed militia in Iraq, the Kataib Hezbollah. The US said those strikes were in retaliation for last week's killing of an American contractor and the wounding of American and Iraqi troops in a rocket attack on an Iraqi military base that the US blamed on the militia.

Trump blamed Iran for the embassy breach and called on Iraq to protect the diplomatic mission even as the US reinforced the compound with Marines from Kuwait.