Baghdad: An airstrike has hit two cars carrying Iran-backed militia north of Baghdad, one day after US attack on top Iranian general Gen Qassem Soleimani, an Iraqi official confirmed on Saturday.
The official said five members of the militia were killed.
The official said the identity of those killed was not immediately known. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to reporters.
The new US air strike likely targeted a commander in Iraq's Hashed al-Shaabi paramilitary force early Saturday, state television reported.
The channel said the strike took place north of the Iraqi capital Baghdad but did not name the targeted figure.
A police source told AFP that bombardment there hit a Hashed convoy and left "dead and wounded".
With the second strike, US President Donald Trump's assurance that Soleimani's death will not result in war seems like an empty promise.
Defending the killing of top Iranian commander in a US strike, President Donald Trump on Friday said "reign of terror is over" and claimed Qasem Soleimani had contributed to "terrorist plots as far away as New Delhi and London."
General Soleimani, the head of Iran's elite al-Quds force and architect of its regional security apparatus, was killed following a US airstrike at Baghdad's international airport on Friday. The strike also killed the deputy chief of Iraq's powerful Hashed al-Shaabi paramilitary force.
Trump alleged that Soleimani has been perpetrating acts of terror to destabilize the Middle East for the last 20 years.
Under my leadership we have destroyed the ISIS territorial caliphate, and recently American special operations forces killed the terrorist leader known as al-Baghdadi. The world is a safer place without these monsters, the president said.
(With inputs from AP, AFP via PTI.)
