Lebanon's Iran-backed Hebzollah group met with Iraqi militia leaders in the wake of the death of their powerful mentor and top Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, Reuters reported on Tuesday.

The meetings sought to unite and coordinate political efforts of Iraq's mostly divided militias, which lost both Soleimani and Iraqi paramilitary commander Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis in a US strike earlier this year.

The Lebanese group, which is sanctioned as a terrorist organisation by the US, is helping fill the void left by Soleimani to help guide pro-Tehran Iraqi militias, Reuters reported citing anonymous sources.



Hezbollah's "guidance of the militias would continue until the new leadership in the Quds Force gets a handle on the political crisis in Iraq", Reuters reported a pro-Iran regional official as saying.

Soleimani, who was head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps' Quds Force, ran Iran's overseas military operations and was Tehran's pointman on Iraqi affairs.

Muhandis was the deputy head of the Hashd al-Shaabi - or Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF) - a loose network of paramilitary groups formed in 2014 to fight jihadists that has since been absorbed into the Iraqi state.

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He, Soleimani and eight others were killed in the 3 January US strike outside Baghdad's International Airport that Iraq's government slammed as a violation of its sovereignty.

Muhandis was close to Iran and worked with his mentor and friend Soleimani to broker deals among Iraq's fractured political elite.

The US attack outraged Iraq's parliament and led it to swiftly voted to oust all foreign forces, a longstanding demand of the PMF and its political arm, Fatah.

Some 5,200 American troops are based in Iraq, leading the international coalition fighting the remnants of the Islamic State group.