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
https://arab.news/ghzjt
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
Syria says detained senior Daesh jihadist in Damascus
- The arrest came less than two weeks after a December 13 attack killed two US soldiers
DAMASCUS: Syrian authorities have arrested a senior Daesh group official in the Damascus region in a joint operation with a US-led international coalition, a security official said on Wednesday.
Taha Al-Zoubi, also known as Abu Omar Tabiya, an Daesh leader in Damascus, was detained with several of his men, General Ahmad Al-Dalati was reported as saying by state news agency SANA.
The arrest came less than two weeks after a December 13 attack killed two US soldiers and a US civilian that Washington said was carried out by a lone Daesh gunman in central Syria’s Palmyra.
“Our specialized units, in cooperation with the General Intelligence Directorate and and International Coalition forces, carried out a precise security operation targeting” an Daesh hideout, Dalati said.
On December 20, a Syria monitor said that five Daesh members were killed in US strikes in retaliation for the December 13 attack.
It was the first such incident since the overthrow of longtime ruler Bashar Assad in December last year, and Syrian authorities said the perpetrator was a security forces member who was due to be fired for his “extremist Islamist ideas.”
