Houthi drone expert killed in U.S. strike in Iraq

A Yemeni drone specialist who had traveled to Iraq to train other Iranian-backed fighters was among those killed in a U.S. airstrike near Baghdad last week, American and Iraqi defense officials said, illustrating the extensive cooperation among militant groups supported by Tehran.

The July 30 airstrike in Musayib, a town south of Iraq’s capital, targeted militants preparing to launch an attack on U.S. forces, officials have said. The strike killed Hussein Abdullah Mastoor al-Shabal, a Houthi commander, though the Pentagon was unaware of who he was until after an assessment of the operation’s results, said the U.S. official, who like others in this story spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss the airstrike.

The strike, the first such American operation in Iraq in months, is part of a broader cycle of violence that has gripped the Middle East since the war between Israel and Hamas erupted in October. The incident followed attacks on American positions in Iraq and Syria in recent days, officials have said, ending what had been months of relative calm between U.S. troops and the militias there.

Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen and a cluster of militias in Iraq and Syria all receive weapons and training from Iran, part of a vast anti-Israel, anti-U.S. network Tehran has supported for years.