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Iranian-backed Iraqi fighters likely assassinated Iraqi Sunni Sovereignty Alliance candidate and Baghdad Provincial Council member Safaa al Mashhadani on October 14 with an explosive device in al Dhubat neighborhood, Tarmiyah district, Iraq. The perpetrators remotely detonated an explosive device on Mashhadani’s car, killing Mashhadani and injuring four others. Both the Iraqi parliament speaker and the prime minister announced investigations into the assassination. Iraqi Security Media Cell head Lieutenant General Saad Maan said on October 15 that unspecified actors had previously tried to assassinate Safaa al Mashhadani. No group has claimed responsibility for either incident at the time of this writing, which suggests the involvement of Iranian-backed actors.
Iranian-backed militias likely assassinated Safaa al Mashhadani. Iranian-backed Shia militias have long maintained a presence in Tarmiyah and other predominantly agricultural areas north of Baghdad, where they have murdered Sunni civilians and advocated sectarian cleansing of Sunni areas. Both Kataib Sayyid al Shuhada and Kataib Hezbollah have explicitly and implicitly called for Sunnis in Tarmiyah to be displaced and presumably replaced with Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) facilities or other populations. Iranian-backed militias previously cleansed Jurf al Sakhr, a formerly Sunni area south of Baghdad, and replaced the Sunni town there with a PMF base that is inaccessible to the Iraqi government. These militias also recently denied the capable, apolitical, and US-trained Iraqi Counter-Terrorism Service (CTS) access to Tarmiyah. Mashhadani continuously advocated for the removal of Iranian-backed Iraqi militias from Tarmiyah, which these groups would have perceived as a threat to their dominance north of Baghdad. Mashhadani’s assassination followed his October 14 announcement that the Baghdad Provincial Council voted to suspend the allocation of investment licenses for projects in the Baghdad Belts following reports of unspecified violations against local farmers and landowners.
The Houthis confirmed on October 16 that Israeli airstrikes killed Houthi Chief of General Staff Mohammad Abd al Karim al Ghamari. Ghamari is the most senior Houthi official who has been killed since 2004, according to a Yemeni analyst. Ghamari served as the Houthi military chief of staff since 2016. Ghamari was responsible for overseeing Houthi military operations and directing the procurement of various weapons. Ghamari reportedly had close ties to Hezbollah and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC). The United States designated Ghamari a Specially Designated National and Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT) in May 2021. The Houthis will almost certainly not immediately retaliate for Ghamari’s death. The Houthis did not specify when Ghamari was killed, but Israeli airstrikes in June and August 2025 reportedly targeted him. The Houthis have likely announced his death now because they view the recent Hamas-Israel ceasefire agreement as an end to the October 7 War. Other Axis of Resistance groups have similarly delayed confirming the death of leaders. Israel killed former Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip, Mohammad Sinwar, in May 2025, but Hamas only confirmed his death months later in August 2025.
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