ANBAR: Two armed drones targeted Iraq’s Ain Al-Asad air base, which hosts US forces and other international forces in western Iraq, a security source and a government source told Reuters on Tuesday.
The attack in the early hours of Tuesday, which the sources said did not cause casualties or damage, is the latest in a series of attacks on US troops in Iraq and Syria, as tensions soar over the Israel-Hamas war.
US and coalition troops have been attacked at least 23 times by rockets and drones in Iraq and Syria from October 17 to 30, according to the US Defense Department website citing a senior US defense official.
There has been an increase in attacks on US forces since the conflict in Israel broke out on Oct. 7 and Iraqi armed groups aligned with Iran threatened to target US interests with missiles and drones if Washington intervened to support Israel against Hamas in Gaza.
A group called the “Islamic resistance in Iraq” has endorsed Tuesday’s attack.
On Monday, four Katyusha rockets were fired at Iraq’s Ain Al-Asad air base, an attack also claimed by the same group.
Iran-backed militia groups in Iraq have consistently demanded the expulsion of American troops after a US air strike in Baghdad killed senior Iranian general Qassem Soleimani and Iraqi militia commander Abu Mahdi Al-Muhandis in 2020. The militia groups since then resorted to rocket attacks on US forces in the country and the embassy in Baghdad.
These attacks stopped when Prime Minister Sudani — nominated by the coordination framework, the largest parliamentary bloc composed of an alliance of Iran-aligned factions — assumed power last year.
Calls for the expulsion of US troops have also been relatively quiet since then. But these demands, along with the attacks, have resumed in connection with increased Israeli bombardment on Gaza.
In the latest such call, on Monday, Iraqi politician Hadi Al-Amiri, leader of the Political and Military Badr organization close to Iran, urged the government to “take all necessary measures to set a serious, specific, and short-term timetable for the exit of international coalition forces from Iraq.”
Amiri’s call comes a few days after Iraq’s Shiite cleric Muqtada Al-Sadr called on the Iraqi government and lawmakers to close the US embassy in Baghdad in response to Washington’s “unfettered support” for Israel.
Drones target Iraq’s Ain Al-Asad air base, no casualties, damage
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Drones target Iraq’s Ain Al-Asad air base, no casualties, damage
- Iraqi armed groups aligned with Iran threatened to target US interests if Washington intervened to support Israel
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.
