ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Five personnel sustained minor injuries when damaged ammunition exploded inside a Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) headquarters in eastern Baghdad on Saturday, prompting military and government investigations, the group said.
“The fire resulting from the explosion of a cache of damaged ammunition inside one of its headquarters east of the Canal in the capital, Baghdad, has been brought under control, confirming that the final toll of the incident resulted in minor injuries to five personnel,” the PMF announced in a statement.
“Initial investigations by the Ministry of Interior's forensic evidence department indicate that the explosion… was the result of an internal malfunction, and there is no indication of any external targeting,” the group stated in a follow-up announcement.
Addressing the incident, the Security Media Cell (SMC) announced that the Iraqi Prime Minister and the commander-in-chief of the armed forces Ali al-Zaidi directed “the formation of an investigative committee to examine the circumstances surrounding the explosion of an ammunition cache inside a Popular Mobilization Forces headquarters east of the Canal in the capital, Baghdad.”
The SMC added that the prime minister “emphasized expediting the investigation to determine the exact causes of the incident, while taking all necessary safety measures and precautions to prevent the recurrence of such incidents in the future.”
The PMF was established in 2014 to combat the Islamic State (ISIS) during the militant group's rapid territorial blitz across northern and western Iraq.
Created in response to a religious edict by Iraq’s highest Shiite authority, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the organization initially formed as an umbrella of approximately 70 predominantly Shiite armed groups before parliament passed a 2016 law legally incorporating its estimated 250,000 members into the formal Iraqi security apparatus.
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