Zaidi gives Kata’ib Hezbollah end-of-week deadline to vacate Jurf Al Nasr

Baghdad (IraqiNews.com) – Iraqi Prime Minister and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces Ali Faleh Al-Zaidi has issued a final ultimatum giving Kata’ib Hezbollah until the end of this week to hand over full security and military control of the Jurf al-Nasr (Jurf al-Sakhar) subdistrict in northern Babylon Governorate to federal forces, warning of an impending military intervention led by the Counter-Terrorism Service (CTS) if mediation fails. According to informed government and political sources, Al-Zaidi conveyed the non-negotiable deadline through intermediaries from the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF/Hashd al-Shaabi) and the ruling Coordination Framework. The Prime Minister warned that if the faction refuses to withdraw peacefully, elite CTS units will be deployed in the coming days to assert full state authority across the entire subdistrict, emphasizing that any party obstructing federal forces will be prosecuted under Iraq’s Anti-Terrorism Law with full backing from the judiciary. The standoff escalated sharply after Al-Zaidi received the formal findings of the government commission investigating crude oil smuggling in Jurf al-Nasr. The report confirmed extensive pipeline breaches and clandestine oil-refining facilities inside the closed zone, noting that armed elements actively blocked federal investigators from inspecting several restricted sectors. In immediate response to the commission’s report, the Commander-in-Chief ordered sweeping judicial referrals and administrative dismissals: Judicial Referrals: Referred all suspects implicated in the smuggling network directly to the judiciary. Security & Administrative Dismissals: Relieved multiple senior security, military, and administrative officials in Babylon Governorate—including the Provincial Police Chief and senior officers across intelligence agencies, National Security, the Hashd al-Shaabi, Energy Police, and the Oil Pipelines Company. Maximum Alert Status: Placed military and security formations on Alert Level “C” (Indhar Jim)—Iraq’s highest state of operational readiness—accompanied by troop movements toward northern Babylon and additional Federal Police deployments tightening perimeter checkpoints. Over recent days, Al-Zaidi held intensive crisis consultations with senior Coordination Framework and Hashd al-Shaabi leaders—including Badr Organization Secretary-General Hadi Al-Amiri, PMF Commission Chairman Falih Al-Fayyadh, and PMF Chief of Staff Abdul-Aziz Al-Muhammadawi (“Abu Fadak”)—who are attempting to broker a peaceful handover to avert an armed clash between state forces and Kata’ib Hezbollah. Sources also revealed that an earlier federal contingency plan—which had envisioned deploying three brigades from the Shrine Brigades (Quwat al-Atabat), the Third Division of the Federal Police, and CTS detachments—was shelved after its operational axes were leaked, prompting Baghdad to formulate an alternative operation centered directly on elite Counter-Terrorism Service units to retake the entirety of Jurf al-Nasr rather than merely reinforcing outer perimeters.