US Military Thwarts Drone Attack Against US Forces in Iraq
The US military thwarted an attack against its forces in Iraq early on Wednesday, according to US officials. The attempt marks the first such attack on US forces in Iraq in more than a year.
The officials said the US military intercepted two one-way attack drones before they could strike the al-Asad air base in western Iraq, which hosts American troops. They did not say who was believed to be behind the attack, but the US has been on heightened alert for activity by Iran-backed groups amid growing regional tensions over the Israel-Hamas war.
The US currently has 2,500 troops in Iraq and 900 more in neighboring Syria to assist local forces in combating the radical Islamic State group.
Last week, Iraqi armed groups aligned with Iran threatened to attack US interests with missiles and drones if the US intervened to support Israel in the conflict with Hamas.
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Iraq’s top Shi’ite cleric, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, last week condemned Israel and called on the world to stand up to the “terrible brutality” in Gaza.
Those calls have grown following Tuesday’s lethal blast at a hospital in the Gaza Strip, which the Palestinians blame on Israel but which Israel blames on a misfired Palestinian rocket. US President Joe Biden said Wednesday the blast appeared to have been caused by the Palestinian side.
The radical paramilitary Iraqi Shi’ite group Kata’ib Hizbullah (Hizbullah Brigades), which has close ties to Iran, accused the US of supporting Israel in “killing innocent people” and said it should leave Iraq.
“These evil people must leave the country, otherwise they will taste the fire of hell in this world before the afterlife,” the group said in a statement late on Tuesday.
Iraqi politician Hadi al-Ameri, leader of the political and military group the Badr Organisation, which is close to Iran, also blamed Israel for the attack on the hospital and described it as “the massacre of the era, which can only be classified as a war crime,” and condemned the U.S. and Western countries for supporting Israel.
We “will not hesitate to consider America and the West as partners in this hideous massacre,” he said in a statement on Tuesday night.
Dozens of members of Iraq’s state paramilitary Popular Mobilization Forces, which contain many Iran-backed factions, protested on Tuesday over the hospital attack, chanting anti-US and anti-Israeli slogans and saying they wanted to storm the U.S. Embassy for its support of Israel.
