(Baghdad) Around ten missiles were fired on Saturday in western Iraq against a military base housing American soldiers and other troops from the international anti-jihadist coalition, an Iraqi police official told AFP and an American soldier.
“The Ain al-Assad base was targeted by 15 rockets” fired from the province of al-Anbar, where this Iraqi military base is located, a police official in the region told AFP, ‘speaking on condition of anonymity.
He said 13 of the projectiles were shot down by air defense while “two fell in the airbase.”
For his part, an American military official confirmed that “missiles” had “hit the Aïn al-Assad air base”, ensuring “that an initial assessment of the damage” was underway, carried out jointly by American forces, those of the international coalition and Iraqi officers.
Speaking on condition of anonymity, he also reported “preliminary” reports of “a member of the Iraqi security forces seriously injured.”
He was not immediately able to confirm the type of ammunition used, after initially mentioning “ballistic missiles”.
The attacks, which were not immediately claimed, come in an explosive regional context, fueled by the repercussions of the war in the Gaza Strip between Israel, an ally of the United States, and the Palestinian movement Hamas, supported by Iran.
On Saturday, five members of the Revolutionary Guards, Iran’s ideological army, including two senior officials, were killed in a strike in Damascus blamed on Israel by Tehran, which threatened reprisals.
Already on Monday evening, Iran had launched ballistic missile attacks against autonomous Kurdistan in northern Iraq, claiming to have targeted a site used by “spies of the Zionist regime (Mossad)”.
Since mid-October, dozens of attacks have targeted American soldiers and coalition forces deployed in Iraq and Syria to fight the Islamic State (IS) group.
Most of these drone strikes or rocket attacks were claimed by the “Islamic Resistance in Iraq”, a network of fighters from pro-Iran armed groups.