Breaking: US drone strike kills top Iran commander, Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad

Iran’s elite commander Qasem Soleimani has been confirmed killed following a US sanctioned strike on Baghdad’s international airport, Iran.
The Pentagon said US President Donald Trump ordered Soleimani’s “killing,” after a pro-Iran mob this week laid siege to the US embassy.
Following Soleimani’s death, Trump tweeted an image of the US flag without any further explanation.
The pre-dawn developments mark the most major escalation yet in a feared proxy war between Iran and the US on Iraqi soil.
Security measures have been reinforced inside Baghdad’s Green Zone and Iraqi counter-terrorism forces stand guard in front of the US embassy after pro-Iran demonstrators left the area a day after their dramatic incursion.
Early Friday, a volley of missiles hit Baghdad’s international airport, striking a convoy belonging to the Hashed al-Shaabi, an Iraqi paramilitary force with close ties to Iran.
Just a few hours later, Iranian state television carried a statement by the Revolutionary Guard Corps saying Soleimani “was martyred in an attack by America on Baghdad airport this morning.”
The Hashed confirmed that both Soleimani and its deputy chief Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis were killed in what it said was a “US strike.”
“The deputy head of the Hashed, Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, and head of the Quds Force, Qasem Soleimani, were killed in a US strike that targeted their car on the Baghdad International Airport road,” it said.
The Hashed is a network of mostly-Shiite armed units, many of whom have close ties to Tehran but which have been officially incorporated into Iraq’s state security forces.
The units joined forces to fight the Islamic State group in 2014, after many of them built up years of fighting experience during Iraq’s war years, including against the US.