A rocket attack targeting U.S. personnel housed at a base in Iraq’s western desert injured several American troops late on Monday, according to U.S. defense officials.
The attack on Ain al Asad Air Base resembled previous ones carried out by Iran-backed Iraqi armed groups, which have targeted the base repeatedly over the past several years but intensified their attacks after Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza began in October.
The latest attack involved at least two rockets that hit inside the base’s perimeter, according to a U.S. official and Iraqi witnesses near the site of the attack. The base had been targeted at least twice in the past three weeks, and there was also an attack late last month on a small U.S. base in eastern Syria where U.S. special operation forces work with Syrian Kurdish troops to tamp down the Islamic State.
Initial reports were that at least five people were injured in Monday’s attack and that the wounded included both U.S. troops and contractors.
The attack comes as tensions are running especially high in the region, with Israel and its American, European and regional allies bracing for a reprisal attack from Iran in response to the killings last week of a Hamas leader, Ismail Haniyeh, in Tehran, and a Hezbollah leader, Fuad Shukr, in the southern suburbs of Beirut.
Israel has said it carried out the attack on Mr. Shukr but has said nothing about the one in Iran. Iranian officials and Hamas have said that Israel was responsible for Mr. Haniyeh’s killing.
The Iranian government has said that any retaliatory attack will also involve its proxy forces, which include Hezbollah, the Houthis in Yemen and militants in Iraq.
Those Iraqi militants have typically attacked U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria and targeted Israel using longer-range rockets. The region has been on high alert for a broad onslaught, similar to Iran’s attack on Israel in April, which was in response to Israel’s killing of three senior leaders of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps and four other Revolutionary Guard officers in Damascus, Syria.
It was not clear if the rocket attack on Monday at Al Asad Air Base was part of that response or a continuation of ongoing efforts by the Iran-backed groups in Iraq to target U.S. forces, who are stationed in the country at the invitation of the Iraqi government. The chief goal of Iran-backed groups in Iraq is to force the U.S. troops to leave the country entirely. No group has taken responsibility for Monday’s attack.
There is continuing negotiation between senior defense officials in Iraq and the Pentagon over how to reconfigure and downsize the U.S. and multinational forces, but they have not yet reached a decision. Within the Iraqi government, there is division, with factions close to Iran pushing for a speedy U.S. departure while others, including many Iraqi defense officials, pushing for limited longer-term U.S. involvement.
There are about 2,500 American troops in Iraq, as well as 900 in Syria, where the Islamic State has once again become active.
The White House said in a statement that President Biden and Vice President Kamala D. Harris had been briefed on the attack and had discussed steps that the administration would take “to defend our forces and respond to any attack against our personnel in a manner and place of our choosing.”
After a July 16 drone attack on the U.S. area of the Ain al Asad base, which did not result in injuries, the U.S. military bombed a small drone factory in Jurf al Sakhar, an area south of Baghdad, which serves as a base for the Iranian-backed group Kata’ib Hezbollah and others. The U.S. attack killed four fighters — three Iraqis and a Houthi commander — at the site.
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