Tensions between Baghdad’s allies Tehran and Washington might escalate in the coming days following the crashing of 3 rockets into a base at the Iraqi capital’s airport housing US troops.
According to reliable sources, the projectiles hit the section of the airbase occupied by Iraqi troops, who share the base with soldiers deployed by Washington as part of the US-led anti-jihadist coalition.
One Iraqi soldier was seriously wounded, the source further revealed.
It is the second attack on US interests in Iraq in less than a week. On Sunday, five rockets targeted another airbase north of the capital, wounding three Iraqi soldiers and two foreign contractors.
Although there was no immediate claim of responsibility for the strike, however, Washington routinely blames Iran-linked Iraqi factions for such attacks on its troops and diplomats.
Read Also: Biden, Iraqi PM Discuss Recent Embassy Rocket Strikes
Friday’s is the 23rd bomb or rocket attack against American interests in Iraq — including troops, the Baghdad embassy, or Iraqi supply convoys to foreign forces — since US President Joe Biden took office in January.
Dozens of other strikes were carried out from autumn 2019 under the administration of former US President Donald Trump.
In mid-April, an explosives-packed drone slammed into Iraq’s Arbil airport in the first reported use of such a weapon against a base used by US-led coalition troops in the country, officials said.
In February, more than a dozen rockets targeted the military complex inside the same airport.
In the past year, two foreign contractors, one Iraqi contractor and eight Iraqi civilians have been killed in the attacks.
Iran-US tensions
The operations are sometimes claimed by obscure groups that experts say are smokescreens for Iranian-backed organizations long present in Iraq.
Qais al-Khazali, a senior pro-Iran figure in the state-sponsored Hashed al-Shaabi paramilitary force, recently 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 almost daily attacks on coalition supply convoys across the mainly Shiite south.
AFRICA TODAY NEWS, NEW YORK