World

Car bomb blast kills four in Baghdad’s Sadr City – police

A drone dropped explosives near U.S. forces stationed at Erbil airport in northern Iraq late on Wednesday, Kurdish officials said, with no immediate reports of casualties.

A separate rocket attack killed a Turkish soldier at a military base nearby, the Turkish defence ministry said.

It was the first known attack carried out by an unmanned aerial drone against U.S. forces in Erbil, amid a steady stream of rocket attacks on bases hosting U.S. forces and the embassy in Baghdad that Washington blames on Iran-backed militias.

The interior ministry of the autonomous Kurdistan regional government, based in Erbil, said in a statement the drone was carrying TNT which it used to target the U.S. forces. It said no one was hurt in the attack.

A group that Western and some Iraqi officials say is aligned with Iran praised the attack, but did not explicitly claim it.

A barrage of rockets hit the same U.S.-led military base in the Erbil International Airport vicinity in February, killing a non-American contractor working with the U.S. military.

Shortly before Wednesday’s attack in Erbil, at least two rockets landed on and near a base to the west of the city that hosts Turkish forces, Iraqi security officials said. That attack killed a Turkish soldier, Ankara said.

A rocket hit a base belonging to an Iraqi Shi’ite Muslim militia group near that Turkish base a few hours later, a security official said, wounding at least one fighter. It was not immediately clear who had fired the rocket.

Turkey also has troops in Iraq both as part of a NATO contingent and a force that has attacked Kurdish separatist militants in the north.

The Iran-backed militias oppose both the presence of the United States and Turkey and demand a full withdrawal of all foreign troops.

The United States has sometimes responded with air strikes against Iran-aligned militias including on the Iraqi-Syrian border.

An air strike ordered by former president Donald Trump that killed Iran’s top commander Qassem Soleimani in January 2020 sent the region to the brink of a full-scale conflict.

R

Leave a Comment

Recent Posts

Tunisian Dinar currency exchange rate on 20 May 2024

The exchange rate of the Tunisian dinar (TND) in foreign currencies (EUR, US Dollar, CHF…

1 heure ago

Tunisia-Parliament:Adoption of $300 million loan agreement between Tunisia and IBRD

MPs of the House of People's Representatives (ARP) voted on Tuesday on the bill relating to the…

2 heures ago

Bouderbala sends message of condolence to Iranian counterpart on death of Ibrahim Raisi

Speaker of the House of People’s Representatives, Ibrahim Bouderbala, sent a message of condolence to the…

2 heures ago

10 workers killed after bus fell into Nile River in Egypt

Egypt’s Health Ministry said today that at least 10 people have died after a minibus…

2 heures ago

Syrian first lady Asma al-Assad diagnosed with leukemia

Syria's first lady, Asma al-Assad, has been diagnosed with leukaemia, the Syrian presidency reported on…

2 heures ago

Tunisia-Cochineal insect in Tunisia…history of its appearance and mechanisms to limit its spread

Member of the National Executive Office of the Peasants’ Union and responsible for biological agriculture Adel…

2 heures ago

This website uses cookies.