ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq - Harakat al-Nujaba, a pro-Iran Iraqi militia, on Wednesday condemned overnight US-Saudi strikes on Iraq, calling for the expulsion of the US military from the country and an end to all cooperation with Saudi Arabia, as well as vowing to exact a "heavy price" for the attacks.

Following a series of drone attacks in Saudi Arabia that Riyadh accused Iran-aligned factions in Iraq of orchestrating, the Saudi and US militaries conducted extensive airstrikes on Iraqi soil that killed at least 20 members of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF).

"According to information gathered, the attacks targeted PMF headquarters in the provinces of Baghdad, Wasit, Nineveh, Basra, Kirkuk, Karbala, and Diyala, also resulting in varying degrees of material damage to a number of headquarters, vehicles, and military equipment," the PMF said.

The PMF is an umbrella group of Shiite militias that officially operates under the authority of the Iraqi state, but has been repeatedly criticized for including pro-Iran factions that operate at Tehran's behest.

Calling the present situation a "dangerous historical juncture," Harakat al-Nujaba, a PMF component, said that "the American occupation of Iraqi territory has become an imminent danger threatening the country's security and stability," urging Baghdad to expel US forces to quit Iraq.

Under the terms of pre-existing agreement, the US military is obligated to withdraw from the country by the end of September.

"We demand the severing of all forms of cooperation with the criminal Saudi regime, which has proven itself to be the head of the snake and the financier of terrorism against Iraq and its people," the statement continued.

The armed group also demanded that the Iraqi government "immediately break its silence" on the matter and "not be content with mere statements of condemnation and denunciation, which only embolden the aggressor," as well as calling for the provision of air defense systems to prevent future attacks.

"We in the Al-Nujaba Movement will not allow the tyrants of Washington and the Saudi Arabs to defile the land of Iraq without exacting a heavy price from them in terms of their interests and security."

Iraq's Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) on Wednesday shared footage of one of its bases in Nineveh that was destroyed by overnight US-Saudi strikes targeting pro-Iran militias, with at least 20 PMF personnel having been killed across the country. pic.twitter.com/6ftRKnxG51

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Iran also condemned the US-Saudi strikes, asserting that "they are in line with the ambitions of the United States and the Zionist regime to expand the scope of war and conflict in the West Asia region."

The Iranian foreign ministry professed Iran's "full support and solidarity" with the Iraqi government and its people, vowing to hold "the warmongering regime of the United States and its accomplices in the region responsible for the dangerous consequences of these criminal, inhumane, and provocative actions."

The surprise attacks have drawn a wide range of domestic political reactions within Iraq, with Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi having convened an emergency meeting of the National Security Council to review the events and formulate an official response.

Zaidi, who recently followed up a high-profile visit to meet US President Donald Trump in Washington with a trip to meet Iranian officials in Tehran and attend the funeral of late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, faces an enduring Iraqi geopolitical struggle between balancing relations with both the US and Iran.

The Iraqi Presidency, for its part, condemned the attacks as "unacceptable," while former premier Mohammed Shia' al-Sudani termed them "a blatant violation of Iraqi sovereignty and a grave transgression of the principle of Islamic brotherhood."

Influential Iraqi Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr similarly rejected all attacks on the country, be they from Iran or Gulf neighbors, while also condemning "the shameless actions of the militias to drag Iraq into a pointless war."

“Since this holy land was not a launching point for bombing the Islamic Republic, then our brothers in the [Iranian] Revolutionary Guard must not bomb our independent and holy lands. Likewise, the rogue militias must not give our brothers in the Gulf Arab states a pretext to target our holy land,” Sadr said in a statement.

Sadr's own armed faction, Saraya al-Salam, has accepted integration into the Iraqi national security apparatus as part of a push by Zaidi's government to restrict weapons to the hands of the state, though many PMF components have rejected the process outright.