SAMARRA: US contractor Lockheed Martin has withdrawn its staff from an Iraq base where it had been maintaining the Iraqi army’s F-16 fighter jets, military sources said, after a spate of rocket attacks.
At least five attacks have targeted the Balad air base, where other US companies including Sallyport are also present, since the start of the year.
At least three foreign subcontractors and one Iraqi subcontractor have been wounded.
The attacks are rarely claimed, and when they are it is by obscure groups that experts say are a facade for Iran-backed Iraqi factions.
“On Monday morning, 72 Lockheed Martin technicians left,” a high-ranking Iraqi military official told AFP, while a second confirmed the move.
“The technical team in charge of maintenance of the F-16s left the Balad base for Irbil,” the capital of Iraq’s Kurdistan region, the first source added, requesting anonymity.
Baghdad had sent its national security adviser Qassim Al-Araji to the Balad base last week to try to reassure the American firm, days after the latest salvo.
Tahsin Al-Khafaji, spokesman for Iraq’s Joint Operations Command, said Lockheed Martin would “continue to advise the Iraqi air force, even remotely,” citing contractual obligations.
The United States has provided Iraq with 34 F-16s, all stationed at Balad. It has also trained Iraqi pilots, while American contractors have been in charge of the fleet’s upkeep.
Irbil was long considered safer than the rest of Iraq, but the situation has changed recently and Washington has deployed a C-RAM rocket defense system as well as Patriot missiles there, as it has done in Baghdad to protect its troops and diplomats.
In mid-April, pro-Iran fighters sent an explosives-packed drone crashing into Irbil airport in the first reported use of such a weapon against a base housing US troops in Iraq.
The Pentagon has warned that attacks against the US-led coalition rose in the first three months of this year.
“In Iraq, Iran-aligned militias increased their attacks targeting coalition positions and assets this quarter, prompting a temporary departure of US contractors supporting Iraq’s F-16 program,” it said in a report to Congress released earlier this month.
US contractor leaves Iraq base over rocket attacks
https://arab.news/wyg5n
US contractor leaves Iraq base over rocket attacks
- At least three foreign subcontractors and one Iraqi subcontractor have been wounded
- Baghdad sent its national security adviser to Balad base last week to try to reassure the American firm
The UN says Al-Hol camp population has dropped sharply as Syria moves to relocate remaining families
The UN says Al-Hol camp population has dropped sharply as Syria moves to relocate remaining families
- Forces of Syria’s central government captured the Al-Hol camp on Jan. 21 during a weekslong offensive against the SDF, which had been running the camp near the border with Iraq for a decade
DAMASCUS: The UN refugee agency said Sunday that a large number of residents of a camp housing family members of suspected Daesh group militants have left and the Syrian government plans to relocate those who remain.
Gonzalo Vargas Llosa, UNHCR’s representative in Syria, said in a statement that the agency “has observed a significant decrease in the number of residents in Al-Hol camp in recent weeks.”
“Syrian authorities have informed UNHCR of their plan to relocate the remaining families to Akhtarin camp in Aleppo Governorate (province) and have requested UNHCR’s support to assist the population in the new camp, which we stand ready to provide,” he said.
He added that UNHCR “will continue to support the return and reintegration of Syrians who have departed Al-Hol, as well as those who remain.”
The statement did not say how residents had left the camp or how many remain. Many families are believed to have escaped either during the chaos when government forces captured the camp from the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces last month or afterward.
There was no immediate statement from the Syrian government and a government spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment.
At its peak after the defeat of IS in Syria in 2019, around 73,000 people were living at Al-Hol. Since then, the number has declined with some countries repatriating their citizens. The camp’s residents are mostly children and women, including many wives or widows of IS members.
The camp’s residents are not technically prisoners and most have not been accused of crimes, but they have been held in de facto detention at the heavily guarded facility.
Forces of Syria’s central government captured the Al-Hol camp on Jan. 21 during a weekslong offensive against the SDF, which had been running the camp near the border with Iraq for a decade. A ceasefire deal has since ended the fighting.
Separately, thousands of accused IS militants who were held in detention centers in northeastern Syria have been transferred to Iraq to stand trial under an agreement with the US
The US military said Friday that it had completed the transfer of more than 5,700 adult male IS suspects from detention facilities in Syria to Iraqi custody.
Iraq’s National Center for International Judicial Cooperation said a total of 5,704 suspects from 61 countries who were affiliated with IS — most of them Syrian and Iraqi — were transferred from prisons in Syria. They are now being interrogated in Iraq.
