WIDER WAR: A US strike yesterday in Baghdad that killed a militia commander linked to Iran may have risked widening regional conflict growing from the Israel/Hamas war. This comes as the Biden administration is trying to get Israel to reduce the violence.

  The strike that rattled central Baghdad killed the deputy commander of a militia that has claimed several attacks on US forces. Mushtaq Talib al-Saidi, nicknamed Abu Taqwa, was killed at a logistical support headquarters ironically located on Palestine Street.

  The Iraqi military reacted with outrage, but a Pentagon spokesman described the strike as “a necessary and proportionate action” against a militant leader “actively involved in planning and carrying out attacks against American personnel.”

  The strike might raise the risk for about 2,500 US military members based in the country to prevent a resurgence of the Islamic State terrorist network, which incidentally just staged an attack of its own. The Islamic State yesterday took credit for the bombing Wednesday in Iran that killed 84 people in a memorial procession for an Iranian general killed in a US air strike. 

  The Islamic State said the double bombing was not carried out with remote-control bombs as originally suspected, but by two suicide bombers. The Islamic State is Sunni Muslim with a mission to kill apostate Muslims, including the Shiites who rule Iran. 

MIGRANT CRISIS: New York City under the direction of Mayor Eric Adamas filed a lawsuit against 17 transportation companies accusing them of aiding Texas Gov. Greg Abbott in dumping 30,000 migrants on Gotham while sticking the city with the costs.

    New York is seeking $700 million in damages, which the city says is the cost of taking care of the migrants. The suit filed in New York state court in Manhattan accuses the companies of transporting the migrants with the “evil intention” of shifting the costs to New York in violation of state law.

  Gov. Abbott said in a statement that, “It’s clear that Mayor Adams knows nothing about the Commerce Clause of the US Constitution, or about the constitutional right to travel that has been recognized by the US Supreme Court.”

THE SHOOTING GALLERY: A sixth grader was killed while four other students and an administrator were wounded yesterday in a shooting carried out by a 17-year-old at a school in Perry, Iowa. The shooter, a high school senior, took his own life. He had been armed with a pump action shotgun and a small-caliber handgun. The local police chief called for “thoughts and prayers.”

ORANGE ALERT: A report by Democrats on the House Oversight committee lists more than $7.8 million in payments from at least 20 foreign governments — including China, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar — to businesses owned by Donald Trump during two years of his presidency.

  Accepting those payments would appear to conflict with the clause of the Constitution that says, “no person holding any office … shall, without the consent of the Congress, accept of any present, emolument, office, or title, of any kind whatever, from any king, prince, or foreign state.”

THE EPSTEIN PAPERS: Documents released over the past two days in the lawsuit involving the late sex trafficker Jefferey Epstein include a titillating list of powerful men who were chummy with the wealthy playboy but provide little evidence of criminal activity.

  Among those named: Former Presidents Trump and Clinton, former Epstein lawyer Alan Dershowitz, Prince Andrew, the late former New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, Hyatt Hotels billionaire Tom Pritzker, AI pioneer Marvin Minsky, as well as the entertainers David Copperfield and Michael Jackson.

  Epstein was known to have corralled underage girls for the pleasure of his friends, but the papers don’t say any of these guys partook.  Obviously they hung around Epstein for his charming personality.

THE 60s LIVE: The University of California Berkely has used shipping containers to wall off the long-embattled Peoples Park in preparation for building a dormitory tower that would house 1,100 students in this town starved for affordable housing.

  Students and locals for decades have defended the rare patch of greenspace in crowded Berkeley even though it became a haven for drug dealers and junkies. 

  Back in 1969, hundreds of students and community activists brought sod, trees and flowers to the vacant lot owned by the university, proclaiming it People’s Park. In an incident dubbed “Bloody Thursday one man was killed by police gunfire and another blinded in a violent conflict between more than 150 cops and thousands of demonstrators who wanted to stop the university from building on the open ground. 

THE SPIN RACK: A federal judge in Kentucky ruled that former Rowan County Clerk Kim Davis, who refused to issue marriage licenses to same-sex couples, must pay $260,104 in fees and expenses to lawyers who represented a couple that sued. That’s in addition to the $100,000 in damages a jury said Davis must pay that same couple. — A subway train carrying about 300 passengers collided with an out-of-service train near West 96th Street in Manhattan yesterday, causing both trains to derail. Twenty-four people were reported injured. — The footless South African Olympic “blade runner” Oscar Pistorius, who was convicted of murdering his girlfriend, has been released from prison after serving only seven of 15 years. In 2013, Pistorius shot Reeva Steenkampthrough a locked bathroom door. 

BELOW THE FOLD: A convicted Las Vegas felon who leapt over the bench and attacked the judge who was imposing sentence on him for a fourth conviction said he did it because he was having a bad day. 

-30-