Afghanistan Times
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AT Monitoring Desk
KABUL: US President Donald Trump said the action against Iran’s top military commander Qassem Soleimani was “to stop a war, not to start one.” He said Soleimani’s “reign of terror” was “over” following a strike at Iraq’s Baghdad airport on Friday.
“What the United States did yesterday should have been done long ago,” Trump said, “A lot of lives would have been saved.”
Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani, leader of the foreign wing of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, was killed in an airstrike by US in Baghdad on Friday morning.
His killing has provoked strong reactions from Iranian leaders and military commanders who said it will be followed by a “harsh revenge.”
Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo in a video message also said US action against Soleimani saved lives, as he was plotting attacks that could have killed “hundreds of Americans.”
“While the president made it very clear we do not want war, when American lives are at risk, we will act quickly and decisively,” he said.
According to AFP, a US official said that 3,000 troops would be sent to the Middle East as a precaution, presumably beyond the 700 U.S. Army paratroopers that arrived in Kuwait on Wednesday.
