Iraq PM says he tried to stop US airstrikes

In a partly televised Cabinet meeting Monday, Iraq's caretaker Prime Minister Adel Abdel-Mahdi said he had tried to stop US airstrikes on targets within Iraq from happening "but there was insistence" from US officials. The US military carried out the strikes Sunday against the Iranian-backed Kataeb Hezbollah militia, calling it retaliation for last week's killing of an American contractor in a rocket attack on an Iraqi military base that it blamed on the group.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the strikes send the message the US will not tolerate actions by Iran that jeopardise American lives. The US military said "precision defensive strikes" were conducted against five sites of Kataeb Hezbollah, or Hezbollah Brigades, in Iraq and Syria. The group, which is a separate force from the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, operates under the umbrella of the state-sanctioned militias known collectively as the Popular Mobilisation Forces. Many of them are supported by Iran.