The Directorate General of Counter Terrorism (CTD), also known as Kurdistan CT, announced that “At 11:06 pm a suicide drone fired by ‘outlaw militia groups’ at the global coalition against ISIS military base in Erbil International Airport, was shot down and destroyed”.
Earlier on Thursday, the Erbil-based counterterrorism force denied reports of a drone strike targeting the Erbil Airport, dismissing them as “baseless”.
The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, a network of shadow Iraqi militia groups backed by Iran and affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), has claimed responsibility for the attack.
The group has claimed most of similar attacks against US interests in Iraq, the Kurdistan Region, and Syria since mid-October.
The attempted drone strike comes days after the IRGC targeted Erbil with ballistic missiles, killing at least four people, including an 11-month-old toddler, and injuring 17 others.
Iran-backed militias have struck bases of the coalition in Iraq and Syria with rockets and drones over 100 times since mid-October, in retaliation to Washington’s support for Israel in its war against the Gaza Strip.
US forces have responded with several retaliatory strikes targeting militia groups they blame for the attacks, which has drawn the ire of the Iraqi government. Baghdad has strongly condemned American retaliatory strikes, saying that the attacks were conducted without approval from the Iraqi government and therefore constituted a violation of Iraq’s sovereignty.
Around 2,500 American troops in Iraq and 900 in Syria are leading an international coalition through Operation Inherent Resolve that has assisted Kurdish, Iraqi, and local Syrian forces in the fight against ISIS, which once held swathes of land in Iraq and Syria but was declared territorially defeated in 2017 and 2019 respectively.
