*Pentagon to deploy more troops to Middle East

The United States plans to deploy at least 3,000 additional troops to the Middle East after Iran pledged to avenge the killing Friday of one of its top military commanders in Baghdad.
Qassem Soleimani — the head of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps' foreign operations arm — was targeted in what a US official said was a drone strike on his convoy near Baghdad's international airport.


Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis (L) and Qassem Soleimani

The Pentagon said US President Donald Trump had ordered Soleimani's killing after a pro-Iran mob laid siege to the American embassy in the Iraqi capital earlier this week, throwing rocks and setting fires.
Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei swiftly promised "severe revenge" for the death of the military mastermind — the biggest escalation yet in what some fear could end up being a proxy war between Iran and the US on Iraqi soil.


Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei embracing a relative of killed Iranian Revolutionary Guards commander Qasem Soleimani, in the capital Tehran

As world leaders urged restraint from all sides, Iran's allies rallied behind the Islamic republic, and tens of thousands of angry protesters in Tehran torched US flags and chanted "Death to America."
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned that the "world cannot afford" another Gulf war.