The Iranian-backed militia targeted by US airstrikes in Iraq and Syria pledged to exact revenge for the “aggression of evil American ravens.”

“Our battle with America and its mercenaries is now open to all possibilities,” Kata’ib Hezbollah said in a statement around midnight Sunday, according to the Associated Press. “We have no alternative today other than confrontation and there is nothing that will prevent us from responding to this crime.”

F-15 jet fighters carried out the “defensive strikes” on five targets — three in Iraq and two in Syria — on Sunday in retaliation for a rocket attack Friday on an Iraqi base near Kirkuk that killed an American citizen and wounded four US service members.

A spokesman for Kata’ib Hezbollah, which the US classified as a terror group in 2009, denied being behind the missile barrage that killed the US contractor and claimed the US is using it as an excuse to attack the group.

Mohammed Mohieh noted that the death toll in US strikes has risen to 25 and that at least 51 militia members were wounded and vowed the group’s top commanders were deciding how and when to retaliate.

“These forces must leave,” he told the Associated Press, calling the US attacks “a massacre.”

Tehran described the attacks as “terrorism.”

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said the Trump administration took the action against the Iran-backed militias to protect American interests in the region and to curtail Tehran’s aggression.

“Well, it begins by an understanding that this was a defensive action designed to protect American forces and American citizens in Iraq, and it was aimed also at deterring Iran,” Pompeo said Monday on “Fox & Friends.”

He said Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and the country’s military are “working to expand their terror campaign all around the world.”

“They took a strike at an American facility. President Trump’s been pretty darn patient, and he’s made clear at the same time that when Americans’ lives were at risk, we would respond, and that’s what the Department of Defense did yesterday,” Pompeo added.

A leader of Kata’ib Hezbollah in Iraq, Abu Mahdi al-Mohandes, also said the group would hit back.

“The blood of the martyrs will not be in vain and our response will be very tough on the American forces in Iraq,” he said late Sunday, Reuters reported.

Mohandes is a senior commander of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces, an organization of about 40 paramilitary groups mostly associated with Iran-backed Shiite militias, including Kata’ib Hezbollah.

In Syria, the group is fighting alongside troops loyal to President Bashar al-Assad.

Mohandes once fought against US troops during the Iraq war and has been linked to the Quds Force of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, which has been designated a terror group by Trump.