BAGHDAD: Influential Iraqi cleric Moqtada Sadr renewed his calls to close the US embassy in Baghdad Tuesday after an Israeli strike killed dozens of civilians in a camp in Gaza.

Health officials in Gaza said the Sunday night strike killed at least 45 people in a displaced persons’ camp in Rafah, the south Gaza city where Israel launched a controversial offensive earlier this month.

Sadr condemned the Israeli strike and Washington’s “shameless” support for the “genocide” he charged was under way in Gaza.

“I reiterate my demand to expel” the US ambassador and “close the embassy through diplomatic means without bloodshed,” he said in a statement on X.

He said that would be a more effective deterrent than the use of force and would mean US officials “don’t have an excuse to destabilise Iraq”.