ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Thirty-three Katyusha rockets struck Taji air base and its vicinity on Saturday in a rare daytime attack, according to a statement by Iraq's Joint Operations Command released on Saturday afternoon.
Three coalition troops and two Iraqis were wounded in the rocket attack, US-led coalition spokesperson Col. Myles Caggins said on Twitter. Joint Operations Command reported the "critical injuries" of "a number" of Iraqi troops in their statement, adding that the wounded were part of the air force.
“This brutal aggression caused the injury of a number of members of the air defense, who are in critical condition,” read the Joint Operations Command statement.
Iraqi forces located seven platforms which rockets were fired from in the Abu Azam area near Taji, north of Baghdad, the statement said. They found and defused 24 additional missiles at the sites.
The attackers themselves are yet to be found, with the statement declaring that Joint Operations Command will take “all measures to prosecute and arrest those who carried out this act of aggression.”
“We also refuse that American forces or others take any action without the approval of the Iraqi government and the commander-in-chief of the armed forces,” the statement added.
The Katyusha rockets fired at the Taji air base come three days after American and British military personnel were killed in a similar attack, the deadliest to date.
The US responded Friday with air strikes on arms depots it said were used by hardline members of the Hashd al-Shaabi, a network of armed groups incorporated into the Iraqi state but which Washington has blamed for rocket attacks.
The spokesperson of the Iraqi Foreign Ministry, Ahmed al-Sahaf, released a statement on Friday announcing that the ministry held an emergency meeting with undersecretaries and advisers to discuss the “recent US aggression” and summoned the US and British ambassadors to Baghdad.
Pentagon officials described the airstrikes that targeted five weapons facilities in Iraq as “defensive, proportional, and in direct response to the threat posed by Iranian-backed Shia militia groups (SMG)”.
“We assessed that each location stored weapons that would enable lethal operations against US and coalition forces in Iraq,” the US Central Command’s leader Gen.Kenneth F McKenzie Jr. told reporters at a Friday press conference.
This week’s attacks ruptured a period of relative quiet since the US assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad on January 3, prompting a flurry of missile strikes on bases across Iraq.
The United Nations Assistance Mission for Iraq (UNAMI) released a statement on Friday calling for “immediate deescalation” from all sides.
“UNAMI condemns the continued loss of life and calls upon all parties to act with maximum restraint in keeping with international law.
Partnership and dialogue are the only way to build Iraq’s strength and to prevent a resurgence of Daesh,” the statement said, using the Arabic acronym for ISIS.
With reporting from AFP
Last updated at 5.32 pm
