The US Embassy in Baghdad on Friday urged all Americans to depart Iraq immediately, hours after the Iranian Quds Force leader Qassem Soleimani and Iraqi militia commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis were killed in a US airstrike.

“Due to heightened tensions in Iraq and the region, the US Embassy urges American citizens to heed the January 2020 Travel Advisory and depart Iraq immediately,” the embassy said in a statement.

“US citizens should depart via airline while possible, and failing that, to other countries via land,” it added.

Al-Muhandis was the deputy commander of the Popular Mobilization Forces, an umbrella group of mostly Shiite paramilitaries. He also was the founder of the Kataeb Hezbollah, or Hezbollah Brigades.

The Trump administration blamed the group, which is separate from the Lebanese Hezbollah movement, for a rocket attack in northern Iraq last week that killed an American contractor.

He was killed in the US airstrike near Baghdad’s international airport along with Soleimani, the commander of Iran’s elite Quds Force and the architect of its regional military alliances.

Also killed was al-Muhandis’ son-in-law Mohammed Rida al-Jaberi.

Iran has vowed “harsh retaliation” as tensions soared in the wake of the targeted killing.

With Post wires