BAGHDAD: Iranian Gen Qassem Soleimani was killed on Thursday night in a strike by an MQ-9 Reaper drone. The operation to kill Soleimani is believed to have been overseen by the CIA. US Air Force pilots fly Reapers from the Creech Air Force base in Nevada and some are seconded to the CIA in Langley, Virginia. According to the US Air Force, the Reaper is an "armed, multi-mission, medium-altitude, long-endurance remotely-piloted aircraft that is employed primarily against dynamic execution targets and secondarily as an intelligence collection asset. It provides a unique capability to perform strike, coordination and reconnaissance against high-value, fleeting, and time-sensitive targets." President Trump ordered the strike on Soleimani’s convoy as it traveled near the Baghdad International Airport. The hit also killed Abu Mahdi al Muhandis, the deputy commander of Iraq’s Iranian-backed Popular Mobilization Forces and founder of Kataib Hezbollah, a terrorist group th