RIYADH: Troops from the Iraqi army clashed with fighters from the pro-Iran Hashd Al-Shaabi militia on Thursday in a violent incident in Karbala ahead of an annual Shiite pilgrimage.
The clashes happened when four Hashd vehicles tried to force their way through an Iraqi army roadblock on a street in the old city that was reserved for pedestrian pilgrims. The army prevented the Hashd vehicles from passing and both sides fired their weapons into the air.
An Interior Ministry official said six Hashd members had been arrested after the incident by a security unit from their own militia. “An investigation is ongoing to identify who was responsible for opening fire in the middle of pilgrims,” a Hashed official said.
The Hashd were created in 2014 to fight Daesh militants who swept through Iraq after the regular army failed to stop them, and is closely linked with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Iran.
The militia remains a politically and militarily powerful group, some of whose fighters — despite their integration into Iraq’s security forces — periodically clash with other security institutions.
