(Erbil) Twelve “ballistic missiles” fired “outside the borders of Iraq, and more precisely from the east”, targeted the American consulate in Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, on Sunday, without causing any casualties, have said the Kurdish security forces.
Posted at 7:00 p.m.
Updated at 9:24 p.m.
Iraq shares its long eastern border with Iran, which plays an essential political and economic role with its Iraqi neighbour.
But in Iraq, it is generally the firing of rockets or booby-trapped drones, never claimed and on a smaller scale, which target American interests and the troops of the international anti-jihadist coalition. Washington accuses pro-Iran Iraqi factions, which are demanding the departure of American soldiers.
Before dawn on Sunday, an AFP correspondent in Erbil, northern Iraq, heard three explosions.
The attack was carried out with “twelve ballistic missiles fired against a district of Erbil and which targeted the American consulate”, according to a statement from the Kurdistan counter-terrorism unit.
“The missiles were fired outside the borders of Iraq and Kurdistan, [venant] more precisely from the east of the country. “There are no human losses, only material damage,” the statement added.
For his part, a spokesman for the US State Department assured that there was “neither damage nor victim in any of the installations of the American government”.
The local television channel Kurdistan24, whose studios are not far from the new premises of the American consulate, published on its social networks images of its damaged offices, with collapsed sections of the false ceiling and broken glass.
“We condemn this terrorist attack launched against several sectors of Erbil, we call on the inhabitants to keep calm”, indicated in a press release the Prime Minister of Kurdistan Masrour Barzani.
Regional tensions
The shootings against Erbil come nearly a week after the death in Syria of two senior officers of the Revolutionary Guards, the ideological army of the Islamic Republic of Iran, killed in an attack attributed to Israel.
“The Zionist Regime [Israël] will pay for this crime,” the Guardians promised in a statement on Tuesday.
In January 2020, Iran fired missiles into Iraq at bases housing American soldiers, in retaliation for the assassination by Washington of Iranian general Qassem Soleimani carried out a few days earlier on Iraqi territory.
In half an hour, 22 Iranian surface-to-surface missiles had thus fallen on the bases of Aïn al-Assad (west) and Erbil (north).
Regional tensions and geopolitical uncertainties regularly affect Iraqi news.
At the beginning of the year, the country had experienced an upsurge in rocket and armed drone attacks. Tehran and several allied groups in the region commemorated the second anniversary of the death of General Soleimani and his Iraqi lieutenant Abu Mehdi al-Mouhandis, killed by US drone fire.
In late January, six rockets were fired at Baghdad International Airport, causing no casualties. In Erbil, the last such attack dates back to September, when “armed drones” targeted the airport.
Sunday’s attack also comes at a time when talks on Iran’s nuclear power, about to conclude, were abruptly suspended, following new demands from Moscow.
Concluded by Iran on one side, and the United States, China, France, the United Kingdom, Russia and Germany on the other, this pact was supposed to prevent Tehran from acquiring the bomb atomic in exchange for the lifting of the sanctions which are suffocating its economy.
But it crumbled in 2018 after Washington withdrew, decided by Donald Trump, who restored his measures against Iran. In response, Iran gradually freed itself from the limits imposed on its nuclear program. Negotiations resumed after Joe Biden was elected to the White House.