American troops attacked at airfield
A drone has fired explosives near US forces stationed at Erbil International Airport in Northern Iraq, Kurdish authorities report.
There would have been no deaths or injuries in the attack. It is so far known for the first drone attack on American troops in Erbil, which have already been hit with missiles several times. Not long ago, the American embassy in Baghdad was also bombarded. The United States attributed those attacks to Iranian-backed militias.
The Interior Ministry of the autonomous Kurdish government in Northern Iraq says in a statement that the drone was armed with a cargo of TNT. Kurdish authorities said there were no injuries in the attack.
Tehran
A group allegedly linked to Iran has praised but not explicitly claimed the attack on US forces. In February, a number of missiles hit the same US base in Erbil, killing a foreign employee of the US military.
Shortly after the drone attack, the Turkish Ministry of Defense announced that a Turkish soldier and a child were killed in a missile attack on a Turkish base in the same region on Wednesday. The soldier was killed when one of the three rockets fired hit the base. The child was killed when one of the other two missiles hit a neighboring village.
American troops attacked at airfield
NATO
Turkey, like the US, has troops in Iraq participating in a NATO mission. However, the country also has troops in the region carrying out attacks on Kurdish separatists. The Iranian-backed militias want to end both the US and Turkish troop presence.
The US has retaliated against attacks in the past with air strikes against Iranian targets and the Iranian militias, including at the Iraq-Syria border. One such air raid early last year knocked out General Qassem Soleimani, one of Iran’s top servicemen. As a result of that action, carried out on the orders of then-President Donald Trump, tensions in the Middle East escalated significantly at the time.
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