Iraqi Kurdistan’s counter-terrorism service said an “explosive drone” targeting US-led coalition forces in Iraq was downed at Arbil airport on Thursday, the second such attack in 24 hours. Dozens of attacks against US and allied forces in Iraq and Syria since mid-October have stoked fears of a regional escalation of the war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas.
The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, a loose alliance of Iran-linked armed groups that oppose US support for Israel, have claimed most of the drone and missile attacks on the troops deployed since 2014 against the Islamic State (IS) group.
In the latest attack, an “explosive drone launched by outlawed militias and targeting the military base of the international anti-IS coalition at Arbil airport was shot down” on Thursday, the counter-terrorism service of Iraqi Kurdistan said. On Wednesday (January 10), officials of the autonomous region reported that a similar attack had been thwarted.
Washington has counted more than 100 attacks against its forces in Iraq and Syria since October 17 and responded to several of them by bombing the sites of pro-Iran armed groups in Iraq.
On January 4, a US drone strike in central Baghdad killed two members of Harakat al-Nujaba, a faction of Hashed al-Shaabi — a collection of mainly pro-Iran former paramilitary units now integrated into Iraq’s armed forces.
The following day, Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, whose government is backed by Tehran-aligned parties, reiterated his “firm” determination to bring an end to the deployment of foreign troops in Iraq.
There are approximately 2,500 US troops in Iraq and around 900 in Syria.
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