At exactly 5.34am on March 20, 2003, US-led coalition forces began their unexpected invasion of Iraq, launching the conflict without a formal declaration or advance warning.
Within hours, the first wave of hundreds of thousands of troops entered the country, including around 45,000 British personnel. Iraq was then ruled by the authoritarian president Saddam Hussein.
The war continued for almost nine years and claimed the lives of nearly 5,000 coalition service members, among them 179 British troops. The full toll among Iraqi civilians and military personnel remains uncertain, although estimates commonly place the number of dead in the hundreds of thousands.
Then-US President George W. Bush and British Prime Minister Sir Tony Blair told the international community that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction and had links to al-Qaeda ahead of the September 11 attacks—claims that were later shown to be false.
Washington and London persuaded their allies that the alleged threat justified removing Saddam from power and offered the prospect of freedom for the Iraqi people.
After Saddam was overthrown and later executed, the United States occupied Iraq, helped establish a Shi’ite-led government and became embroiled in a prolonged counterinsurgency. American forces officially left the country at the end of 2011.
The US military returned fewer than three years later, supporting Iraqi forces in the campaign against Islamic State, a conflict that ran from 2014 to 2017.
More than 20 years after the invasion began, the last American troops are now departing their remaining bases in Iraq.
The withdrawal has raised concerns that neighbouring Iran and its allied groups could gain even greater influence in a country where they have already built a powerful political and security presence.
Iraqi security specialists warn that the pullout—agreed in 2024 under President Joe Biden and implemented by Donald Trump’s administration while it wages war against Iran—could leave Tehran and its partners with greater freedom to operate. They also fear the changing landscape could create opportunities for other US adversaries, including Islamic State, to rebuild.
From Saddam Hussein’s execution and the fall of Baghdad to the emergence and defeat of ISIS, powerful images chronicle America’s two-decade military involvement in Iraq as the final US troops leave.
A British soldier leaps from a burning tank after it was set alight following a shooting incident in Basra, southern Iraq, on September 19, 2005
Al Iraqiya television footage shows masked executioners placing a noose around former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s neck shortly before his hanging in Baghdad on December 30, 2006
Iraqi security forces travel in convoy through Najaf as residents celebrate the September 30, 2026, withdrawal of US-led coalition forces, ending a military presence that began with the 2003 invasion
An Iraqi security force member gestures from a vehicle during a convoy marking the departure of US-led coalition troops in Baghdad on September 30, 2026
An Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant fighter carries the group’s flag and a weapon on a street in Mosul on June 23, 2014
US Marines drag a critically wounded comrade to safety under fire during an operation in Falluja, western Iraq, in an image released on December 17, 2004
Members of Iraq’s security forces take part in a convoy through the city during celebrations marking the US-led coalition withdrawal on September 30, 2026
Smoke billows from an unidentified building as explosions strike Baghdad during air raids on March 21, 2003
A US soldier watches as a statue of Saddam Hussein collapses in Firdos Square in central Baghdad on April 9, 2003
US President George W. Bush meets with Iraqi President Jalal Talabani and Vice Presidents Adel Abdul Mahdi and Tareq al-Hashimi at Salam Palace in Baghdad, Iraq, December 14, 2008
Kurdish peshmerga troops participate in an intensive security deployment against Islamic State militants on the front line in Khazer, Iraq, August 8, 2014
A masked Iraqi Sh’ite militiaman dashes across a street, carrying a rocket-propelled grenade launcher, near a graffiti reading in Arabic ‘No Bush’, in the eastern Baghdad suburb of al-Sadr city, Iraq, August 7, 2004
A fighter from the Iraqi Shi’ite Badr Organization looks at a poster depicting an image of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein on the outskirts of Falluja, Iraq, May 28, 2016
A man, who identified himself as Nick Berg of Philadelphia (C) seated in front of his five masked captors moments before he was executed
Captain Christopher Fallon from Orlando, Florida, of the 1st battalion of the 22nd regiment of the fourth division of the U.S. army plays baseball in one of the palaces of the ousted Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein at an U.S. army base in Tikrit
A man runs down a street warning people to flee shortly after a twin car bomb attack at Shorja market in Baghdad February 12, 2007
A bloodied insurgent sits blindfolded in an Iraqi police station after being captured during a morning battle in the southwestern Al-Bayaa district of Baghdad June 20, 2005
A body of Iraqi man lies by the road side north of Al Nassiriyah on March 25, 2003
Mays, a young Iraqi Shi’ite girl, cries after a mortar shell which landed outside the family’s home in a Najaf residential area injured her uncle August 18, 2004
An Iraqi man holds his hands up as US soldiers and Iraqi special police search his house for weapons in Baquba, in Diyala province some 40 miles northeast of Baghdad late October 26, 2008
US soldiers stand near the Swords of Qadisiyah monument in Baghdad on March 13, 2008
Laura Youngblood, widow of US Navy Petty Officer Travis L. Youngblood, touches his grave stone while visiting his grave in Section 60 of Arlington National Cemetery during the Memorial Day weekend in Arlington, Virginia, May 24, 2009
A resident gestures as he talks to a US soldier from 2nd Brigade combat team, 82nd Airborne on patrol in Baghdad’s Adhamiya district January 5, 2008
Residents mourn as they wait to claim bodies of bomb attack victims outside a morgue in Baghdad, August 17, 2010
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A US soldier displays the picture of the dead Al Qaeda leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, during a news conference at the fortified Green Zone in Baghdad June 8, 2006
A US soldier waves to residents at the newly-opened Mithaq swimming pool in Baghdad’s Sadr City August 30, 2008
An Iraqi girl holds her hands up while US and Iraqi soldiers search her family house in Baquba on June 30, 2007
An Iraqi girl holds her sister as she waits for her mother (R) to bring over food bought in Basra March 29, 2003
A US Army combat engineer, with Psalm 23 written on his Kevlar, bows his head as he takes a short rest after securing an important two lane bridge over the Euphrates river, about 20 km outside Baghdad to push the 3rd infantry’s convoy of more than 3000 vehicles towards Baghdad April 4, 2003
US president George Bush delivering a speech to crew aboard the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln, as the carrier steamed toward San Diego, California on May 1, 2003
Members of the 15th Marine Expeditionary Unit (MEU) Fox Company ‘Raiders’ eat and rest in a house in the town of Nassiriya in central Iraq on April 3, 2003
A US soldier and Iraqi policeman search a room as an Iraqi child sleeps on the bed during a joint raid by the 401 Military Police Company of the US army and the Iraqi police in Tikrit, about 110 miles northwest of Baghdad September 29, 2003
A detained Iraqi man with a plastic bag covering his head sits in garden of a house searched by US soldiers during a night raid in Tikrit October 30, 2003
US Navy Hospital Corpsman HM1 Richard Barnett, assigned to the 1st Marine Division, holds an Iraqi child in central Iraq in this March 29, 2003
Protesters and militia fighters carry an emblem with the logo of the US Embassy, during a protest to condemn air strikes on bases belonging to Hashd al-Shaabi (paramilitary forces), in Baghdad, Iraq, December 31, 2019
An Iraqi militiaman from Shi’ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr’s Mehdi Army gestures near a burning US Army Humvee vehicle, which was captured during a morning gun battle and later set alight, in Kufa, Iraq, April 19, 2004
A family flees past a destroyed Iraqi T-55 tank after a mortar attack on British Army positions in the southern city of Basra, Iraq, March 28, 2003
An injured member of Kurdish Peshmerga forces reacts as smoke rises after an attack at Bai Hassan oil station, northwest of Kirkuk, Iraq, July 31, 2016
Shi’ite fighters launch a rocket during clashes with Islamic State militants on the outskirts of al-Alam, Iraq, March 8, 2015
Members of the Iraqi Special Operations Forces take their positions during clashes with the al Qaeda-linked Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) in the city of Ramadi, Iraq, June 19, 2014
US Marines kick in a door while securing a building next to the main hospital in central Baghdad April 15, 2003, which will be used as a temporary Iraqi police headquarters
An Iraqi man suspected of having explosives in his car is held after being arrested by the US army near Baquba, Iraq, October 15, 2005
Men try to push a vehicle away from the scene of a suicide bomb attack in Baghdad, April 5, 2007
Iraqi police remove a suicide vest from an Iraqi girl in Baquba in this handout photo from the Iraqi police taken August 24, 2008
A US helicopter patrols the area around Baghdad November 8, 2005
An Iraqi woman reacts as men are taken out of a house and detained by US soldiers of the 2nd Brigade, 1st Armour Division and Iraqi soldiers during a joint military operation in Baghdad’s Sadr City July 12, 2008
US soldiers play a game of football on Thanksgiving Day inside the US army base in Qayyara, south of Mosul, Iraq November 24, 2016
US soldiers blindfold an Iraqi man after arresting him during a night patrol at the Zafraniya neighbourhood, southeast of Baghdad September 4, 2007
Smoke rises near the Iraqi Ministry of Justice, shortly after a blast, in Baghdad October 25, 2009
An Iraqi detainee gestures toward US soldiers through bars of his cell at Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad May 17, 2004
A man looks at his wife and baby as he is searched by US Army soldiers from the 10th Mountain Division at a traffic checkpoint in Baghdad March 15, 2005
Troops from the US Army’s 4th Infantry Division (Task Force Iron Horse) fire mortar in front of one of the palaces of former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein in Tikrit, near Baghdad, Iraq, October 25, 2003
Iraqi police and US Army soldiers at the scene after a car exploded on a street in Baghdad, Iraq, October 12, 2003
Soldiers from the US Army’s First Battalion, 124th Infantry Regiment, guard a suspect during a raid in Baghdad, Iraq, June 21, 2003
Iraqi policemen aim their weapons during a training session while being watched by US military personnel at a US military base near Kerbala, Iraq, December 7, 2009
Al-Qaeda fighters celebrate on vehicles taken from Iraqi security forces at a main street in Fallujah, west of Baghdad, Iraq, March 30, 2014
A protester gestures in front of a burning vehicle, destroyed by protesters, during clashes with security forces in Falluja, near Baghdad, Iraq, January 25, 2013
Smoke rises from clashes near Mosul’s Al-Habda minaret at the Grand Mosque, where Islamic State leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi declared his caliphate back in 2014, as Iraqi forces battle to drive out Islamic state militants from the western part of Mosul, Iraq, March 17, 2017
Members of the Iraqi Army’s 9th Armoured Division take photos with an Islamic State flag, claimed after fighting with Islamic State militants, in western Mosul, Iraq, June 17, 2017