US airlifts forces to Iraq embassy amid protests

Footage has emerged showing US military aircraft dropping off as many as 100 marines to the American Embassy compound in Baghdad amid angry protests outside the diplomatic mission against the recent bloody air raids that targeted the positions of Iraq’s popular forces.

Chanting “Death to America” and burning US flags, the demonstrators strongly condemned a set of US airstrikes against Iraq’s Hashd al-Sha’abi or Popular Mobilization Units (PMU) counter-terrorism forces in the western Iraqi Anbar Province, which killed over 30 of them and injured over 50 others.

The protesters held up signs calling for the US diplomatic mission to be shut down and for the parliament to order US forces out of Iraq.

Reuters cited two Iraqi Foreign Ministry sources as saying that the US ambassador and other staff were evacuated amid the protests.

Also on Tuesday, three US defense officials told Fox News that -- in the wake of the mass protests -- the US Army’s 82nd Airborne Division’s alert brigade of roughly 4,000 paratroopers, known as the Deployment Ready Brigade (DRB), was issued orders to prepare for possible deployment in the days ahead in Kuwait.

Iraq already housed around 5,000 American forces before the new deployment.

SS