A US drone strike hit a car in the Iraqi capital on Wednesday night, killing three members of the powerful Kataib Hezbollah militia, including a high-ranking commander, officials said.

The strike came on a main thoroughfare in the Mashtal neighbourhood in eastern Baghdad. A crowd gathered as emergency response teams picked through the wreckage.

A US official familiar with the matter said that a senior Kataib Hezbollah commander was targeted in a US strike on Wednesday in Iraq. The official was not authorised to comment publicly and requested anonymity.

Two officials with Iran-backed militias in Iraq said that one of the three killed was Wissam Mohammed “Abu Bakr” al-Saadi, the commander in charge of Kataib Hezbollah’s operations in Syria. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren’t authorised to speak to journalists.

The strike came amid roiling tensions in the region and days after the US military launched an air assault on dozens of sites in Iraq and Syria used by Iranian-backed militias and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard in retaliation for a drone strike that killed three US troops in Jordan.