🇮🇶🇺🇸 Iraqi official: US troops have fully withdrawn from Iraq

All US combat troops and logistical support forces have left Iraq, an Iraqi government official told German agency dpa on Sunday. Washington has not yet confirmed the withdrawal.

Baghdad and Washington agreed on the pullout in 2024, and the formal deadline expires on 30 September. Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi had called the date "fixed and final." Iraq has declared four public holidays starting Wednesday, the day the deadline runs out.

Around 2,500 US troops had been stationed in Iraq in recent years. Most had already left federal Iraqi territory, with the last holdout at Harir Air Base in Erbil, in the Kurdistan Region. Kurdish outlet Rudaw reported earlier this month that the US had moved eight Patriot batteries from Iraq to Jordan.

The exit comes after months of relentless strikes on US positions. Since the US and Israel launched their war on Iran on 28 February, Iran and allied Iraqi resistance factions have carried out hundreds of attacks on US facilities and Kurdish targets in the country.

Under the original arrangement, Iraq's resistance factions were supposed to disarm and integrate into state security structures in parallel with the US withdrawal. Several of them have long said they would only lay down their weapons once all foreign forces leave Iraq.

It ends a US military presence that began with the 2003 invasion, left briefly in 2011, and returned in 2014 under the banner of "fighting ISIS."

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