Al-Qa'im () is an Iraqi border town located nearly 400 km (248 mi) northwest of Baghdad near the Syrian border and situated along the Euphrates River, and located in the Al Anbar Governorate. It has a population of about 74,100 and it's the center of the Al-Qa'im District.
The Al-Qa'im border crossing connects Al-Qaim to close city Abu Kamal in Syria.
Pre-war history
In the early 20th century, there was a khan (caravanserai) and police station in Al-Qa'im, but no village. The khan was built in 1907, during the latter years of Ottoman Iraq, and was the residence of a local administrator.
Post-Iraq War
IS control
thumb|[[U.S. Army 3rd Cavalry Regiment soldiers fire M777 howitzers into Syria from Firebase Saham, Al-Qa'im, December 2, 2018.]]
Qa'im was under the control of the Islamic State from June 2014 to November 2017.
On 7 December 2016, an Iraqi Air Force airstrike at the town left 100 people dead including IS militants and civilians. It also injured another 100 people.
By November 2017, Al-Qa'im was one of the last towns still under the control of the Islamic State. In the 2017 Western Iraq campaign, the Iraqi government advanced south of the city and by the end of October had reached its outskirts. They entered Al-Qa'im on 3 November 2017, supported by the Norwegian Telemark Battalion, Danish and American special forces units.
Control by Kata'ib Hezbollah
After the eviction of IS forces, the Iraqi-based and Iranian-backed militia Kata'ib Hezbollah (KH), a group under the Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), and which is closely linked to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, has played an important military and security role on the Iraqi side of the border. This role has continued after the reopening of the border crossing on 30 September 2019.
On 25 August 2019 a PMF convoy was hit by two drones near Al-Qa'im killing six, including a senior commander. PMF blamed Israel for the attack.
The Al-Qa'im border crossing between Abu Kamal in Syria and Al-Qa'im in Iraq was reopened on 30 September 2019, after eight years of closure due to Syrian Civil War and Iraqi Civil War.
On 29 December 2019, the United States bombed headquarters of Kata'ib Hezbollah. The airstrikes targeted three targets in Iraq and two in Syria of Kata'ib Hezbollah, and included weapons depots and command posts according to Reuters and a US military statement. The attack was in retaliation for the attack on the K-1 base two days earlier and other attacks on bases with US forces in Iraq. The earlier attack killed a US contractor and wounded four soldiers. Twenty-five KH militiamen were killed in the US airstrikes.
On 28 June 2021, U.S. airstrikes targeted Iran-backed armed Shi'a militias in Al-Qa'im, Iraq and Al-Bukamal, Syria, leaving at least four militiamen dead.
Syrian Civil War
In 2024, after new offensives by rebels, over 1,500 Syrian government soldiers crossed the border into Al-Qa'im, and surrendered to Iraqi forces.
Climate
Al-Qa'im has a hot desert climate (Köppen climate classification BWh).