Militia umbrella claims 171 airspace violations since the Americans left

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, the umbrella label for pro-Iran armed factions, issued a statement on Saturday 24 October backing Tehran against what it called US–Israeli aggression and accusing Washington of repeated violations of Iraqi airspace by fighter and reconnaissance aircraft. The count — 171 — covers the period from 30 September, the day the US-led coalition’s withdrawal concluded, to 23 October, according to The Media Line; Rudaw and the Jerusalem Post render the end date as “Friday”. Nothing in the available reporting corroborates the number independently. “Talk of achieving full ‘national sovereignty,' while violations persist and independent national decision-making continues to be undermined, has become an affront to the dignity and free will of our people,” the statement said, per Rudaw. It also accused al-Zaidi’s government of yielding to US “dictates and pressure” by closing airports and border crossings with Iran.

The number matters because of a sentence written on 1 October. Hours after the last US troops left, Kataib Hezbollah denied reaching any disarmament understanding with the prime minister. Its secretary general, Abu Hussein al-Hamidawi, told The National that “the resistance has won this round, and the victor is the one who imposes his conditions on the enemy”, and ordered fighters to halt all military operations except targeting hostile aircraft violating Iraqi airspace, pending completion of government air defences. Separately, Iraqi officials are investigating explosions at sites holding weapons belonging to Iran-backed factions — including a blast at a PMF ammunition depot in Baghdad on 18 October that injured personnel — which unnamed security sources told The Media Line may have been Israeli attacks. There is no Israeli claim and no Iraqi government attribution.

Assessment: The 171 figure is not evidence; it is infrastructure. Kataib Hezbollah reserved the right to fire at aircraft it deems violators, then an allied umbrella began publishing a running count of violations. That is a self-authorisation building its own case file, and it should never be reproduced without the attribution attached. The missing side remains the American one: a State Department comment to Rudaw on the disarmament file has not surfaced in full. Watch the PMF law alongside this. The only reporting that Baghdad revised the bill under US pressure — restricting PMF movement and urban deployment while keeping the force reporting to the prime minister — is a single outlet citing unnamed sources, with no published text.