Two US soldiers and a British soldier were killed on Wednesday, a US official said, in the deadliest rocket attack in years on an Iraqi military base hosting foreign troops.
The attack threatens a dangerous escalation, with suspected US-led coalition airstrikes promptly targeting Iran-aligned Iraqi fighters in neighboring Syria, a war monitor said.
At least 26 fighters were reportedly killed.
Photo: AFP
On Wednesday evening, a volley of 18 Katyusha rockets hit the Camp Taji air base north of Baghdad that hosts troops from the US-led coalition helping local forces battle extremists.
A coalition statement said that three of its personnel were killed and another 12 were wounded, but it did not provide nationalities.
However, a US official told reporters that the dead were two Americans and a British national.
The Iraqi military said that the rockets were fired from the back of a truck, but it did not comment on any casualties.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and British Minister of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs Dominic Raab condemned the attack in a telephone call.
The two “underscored that those responsible for the attacks must be held accountable,” the US Department of State said in a statement.
While there was no immediate claim of responsibility, Washington has blamed Iran-backed factions from Iraq’s Hashed al-Shaabi military network, which is incorporated into the Iraqi state, for similar violence.
Within hours of Wednesday’s attack, three warplanes likely belonging to the US-led coalition bombed Hashed factions stationed on the Syrian side of the border with Iraq, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said.
At least 26 Iraqi fighters were killed as “10 explosions shook the area near Albukamal,” a Syrian border town with a heavy Hashed presence, observatory head Rami Abdel Rahman said.
Hardline Hashed factions have fought alongside Syrian government forces for several years, and have been targeted by coalition and Israeli airstrikes in Syria.
Wednesday’s attack on Camp Taji was the 22nd on US installations in Iraq, including the US embassy, since late October last year.
One of the earlier attacks killed an Iraqi soldier and in late December last year, a volley of rockets killed a US contractor working at a base in northern Iraq. That killing sent tensions spiraling.
Two days later, the US responded by bombing Kataeb Hezbollah, a faction within the Hashed that is heavily backed by Iran and which Washington has blamed for several rocket attacks.
At least 25 Kataeb Hezbollah fighters were killed and their supporters on Dec. 31 besieged the US embassy in Baghdad.
A US drone strike outside Baghdad International Airport on Jan. 3 killed Iranian general Qassem Soleimani and the Hashed’s deputy chief Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis. Iran then retaliated by launching a volley of missiles at the western Iraqi base of Ain al-Asad. While no personnel were killed in that attack, dozens of US soldiers developed brain trauma.
The tit-for-tat attacks on Iraqi soil left Baghdad furious, and in January its parliament voted to expel all foreign soldiers from Iraq in reaction to the killing of Soleimani. Among them are about 5,200 US forces stationed across Iraq as part of the international coalition — comprised of dozens of countries — formed in 2014 to confront the Islamic State extremist group, which took swathes of territory that year.
While the Islamic State has lost its territory, sleeper cells remain capable of carrying out attacks.
On Sunday, two US soldiers were killed while helping Iraqi forces battle Islamic State remnants north of Baghdad.
Parliament’s vote on the ouster must be implemented by the government, but the caretaker Cabinet has yet to make progress on the decision.
US officials previously told reporters that they considered the Hashed a bigger threat than the Islamic State, given the frequency and accuracy of rocket attacks on US troops that could be traced back to the Shiite-majority network.
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