Shiite militia leaders claimed Monday to have received reassurances from Iraq’s prime minister that there would be no more , opening the way for their fighters to return to the battlefield.
Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi met with leaders of Iraq’s “popular mobilization units” Sunday night to discuss the ground offensive to reclaim Tikrit from Islamic State militants, his spokesman Saad al-Hadithi said. He also said that a final decision on the strikes had not been reached.
Iraq has struggled to stem the internal fallout from requesting the U.S.-led strikes in the battle. Iraqi field commanders had raised concerns about a lack of force after the popular mobilization units — loose affiliations of largely Shiite militias and volunteers that are fighting the Islamic State and are hostile to the United States — refused to fight in Tikrit under American air cover.
Hadi al-Amiri, leader of the Badr Organization, one of Iraq’s most powerful Shiite militias, and Qais al-Khazali, the leader of Asaib Ahl al-Haq, were present at Sunday’s meeting, according to their representatives.
Ahmed al-Asadi, an Iraqi lawmaker and a spokesman for the popular mobilization units, who also attended the meeting, said that the Badr Organization, Asaib Ahl al-Haq and Kitaeb Imam Ali militias would resume fighting.
“The prime minister has promised us there will be a stop to coalition airstrikes,” said Naim al-Abboudi, an Asaib spokesman. “He realized this battle can’t be finished without the mobilization, so we are preparing to rejoin the troops.”
Moeen al-Kadhimi, the head of the popular mobilization committee on Baghdad’s provincial council, said Abadi had reassured the militia leaders that the coalition had finished its strikes against pre-planned targets. Kadhimi also said that the militias had begun on Monday to prepare their fighters for the front lines. “It’s our country, and we should liberate it,” he said.
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Meanwhile, on Sunday , the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps accused a U.S. drone of killing two of its advisers in an airstrike in Tikrit on March 23.
No airstrikes were conducted in or near the city by the U.S.-led coalition that day, Col. Wayne Marotto, a spokesman for the coalition, said in a statement. “We have no reason to believe this claim is true,” he said.
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