Baghdad:
Three rockets crashed into a base at the Iraqi capital’s airport housing US troops Friday, safety sources stated, in the most recent attack coinciding with tensions among Baghdad’s allies Tehran and Washington.
One of the sources told AFP the projectiles hit the section of the airbase occupied by Iraqi troops, who share the base with soldiers deployed by Washington as portion of the US-led anti-jihadist coalition.
One Iraqi soldier was wounded, the supply added.
It is the second attack on US interests in Iraq in much less than a week. On Sunday, 5 rockets targeted a different airbase north of the capital, wounding 3 Iraqi soldiers and two foreign contractors.
There was no quick claim of duty for the strike, but Washington routinely blames Iran-linked Iraqi factions for such attacks on its troops and diplomats.
Friday’s is the 23rd bomb or rocket attack against American interests in Iraq — which includes troops, the Baghdad embassy or Iraqi provide convoys to foreign forces — given that US President Joe Biden took workplace in January.
Dozens of other strikes had been carried out from autumn 2019 beneath the administration of former US president Donald Trump.
In mid-April, an explosives-packed drone slammed into Iraq’s Arbil airport in the 1st reported use of such a weapon against a base utilized by US-led coalition troops in the nation, officials stated.
In February, more than a dozen rockets targeted the military complicated inside the similar airport.
In the previous year, two foreign contractors, one Iraqi contractor and eight Iraqi civilians have been killed in the attacks.
Iran-US tensions
The operations are at times claimed by obscure groups that authorities say are smokescreens for Iranian-backed organisations lengthy present in Iraq.
Qais al-Khazali, a senior pro-Iran figure in the state-sponsored Hashed al-Shaabi paramilitary force, not too long ago declared that the “resistance” was carrying out attacks and would step them up “unless the US withdraws all its combat forces from across Iraq”.
Pro-Iran groups have been ratcheting up their rhetoric, vowing to ramp up attacks to force out the “occupying” US forces, and there have been nearly everyday attacks on coalition provide convoys across the mostly Shiite south.
The United States in April committed to withdraw all remaining combat forces from Iraq, despite the fact that the two nations did not set a timeline for what would be a second US withdrawal given that the 2003 invasion which toppled Saddam Hussein.
The attack also comes amid heightened tensions more than Iran’s nuclear programme.
The remaining partners to the 2015 Iran nuclear deal have been engaged in talks aimed at returning the US to the accord it withdrew from beneath Trump and lifting the sanctions it reimposed on Iran, as properly as making certain Tehran’s return to nuclear commitments that it reduce in retaliation.
Sworn foes Tehran and Washington have each had a presence given that 2003 in Iraq, exactly where 2,500 US troops are nonetheless deployed and Iran sponsors the Hashed al-Shaabi.
Tensions have spiked to the edge of war, in certain soon after Trump ordered a drone strike close to Baghdad’s airport in January 2020 that killed best Iranian military commander Qasem Soleimani.
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