ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Iraq’s top leaders condemned the recent wave of attacks on convoys belonging to the US-led coalition and diplomatic missions at a meeting on Monday. Iraqi President Barham Salih, Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi, and Speaker of the Iraqi parliament Mohammed al-Halbousi met late on Monday to discuss recent developments in the country. “All the attendees of the meeting condemned the attacks on Iraqi and foreign facilities that the country recently witnessed,” reads a statement published by Iraqi Prime Minister media office late on Monday. This includes “the launching of rockets that targeted official diplomatic facilities and the homes of innocent citizens.” The leaders consider such attacks “whatever their source” as creating a real threat to national sovereignty and the Iraqi people, reads the statement. The statement was released minutes after an improvised explosive device (IED) targeted the convoy of an Iraqi Contractor Company transporting equipment for the US-led coalition troop in Salahaddin province, resulting in the damaging of one vehicle within the convoy, according to the Iraqi security media cell. The targeting of convoys belonging to Iraqi companies transporting for the US-led coalition inside Iraq has been almost a daily incident in central Iraq. An IED also struck a British diplomatic mission convoy in Baghdad last week. While another struck an English-language institute in Najaf’s city centre in the early hours of Friday. The attack on the British diplomatic mission convoy was condemned by Iraqi Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, as well as the commander of Iranian-backed Kataib Hezbollah Abu Ali al-Askari last week. Diplomatic targets are more often hit by missiles targeting Baghdad's Green Zone, home to foreign diplomatic offices and Iraqi government buildings. Two Katyusha rockets aimed at the US embassy inside the Green Zone last week were intercepted by a US air defense system. Three mortars landed in the area on Tuesday morning. Recent attacks on US and Western targets in Iraq are believed to have been conducted by the Iran-backed Islamic Front for Resistance inside Iraq (al-Muqawama), a group whose aim is to force US troops to withdraw from the country. Units of the group have claimed responsibility for similar previous attacks. In a statement released last month, the group decried Kadhimi’s recent visit to Washington, and the security consensus between the two countries. “The visit of prime minister [to Washington] did not include the expulsion of the American invader troops from Iraq completely…so we as resistance forces will no longer wait for the strategic dialogue, but instead we will start to target all American interests in Iraq, and create an earthquake under their troops in Iraq, even if they move far away from our cities,” the statement read. US forces pulled out of Iraq in 2011, but were invited back to Iraq in 2014 by the Iraqi government to help fight the Islamic State (ISIS), which had seized territory across Iraq and neighbouring Syria. Although the Iraqi government announced the territorial defeat of ISIS in Iraq in December 2017, remnants of the group ambush security forces, kidnap and execute suspected informants, and extort money from vulnerable rural populations, particularly in territories disputed by Baghdad and Erbil. US troops currently stationed in Iraq mainly advise and assist Iraqi and Kurdish forces in the fight against ISIS remnants. Getting US troops to leave the country has been a demand of Shiite political parties backed by Iran for years, but demands grew louder after the assassination of Iranian general Qasem Soleimani in Baghdad in January. Last week, the Pentagon announced that it plans to pull more than 2,000 soldiers out of Iraq over the course of September, reducing the number of US troops in the country to 3,000.
