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Iraq
Iraqi security forces stand guard as they check motorists entering Baghdad's Green Zone on December 10, 2018. File photo: Karim Kadim / AP
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Iraq’s caretaker Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi slammed Sunday evening fire of Katyusha rockets at the US embassy in Baghdad, warning the attack posed “dangerous ramifications” to the country and risked turning it into a “battlefield”.
According to a statement published on his social media, Iraq’s premier has ordered security forces to “search and investigate” the incident, to “prevent a repeat of targeting the American Embassy”, and to arrest those responsible.
“We censure the continuation of these criminal and illegal acts, which weaken the state, violate its sovereignty, and the sanctity of diplomatic missions on its soil,” Abdul-Mahdi said in the statement.
On Sunday, Iraqi Security Media Cell reported five Katyusha rockets fell on the Green Zone, a heavily fortified area housing government and foreign diplomatic missions. Abdul-Mahdi’s statement revealed the rockets landed within the embassy compound.
“The continuation of individual, irresponsible behavior will cause the entire country to suffer consequences and dangerous ramifications, harming the supreme interests of the country and its relation with its friends, which might turn Iraq into a battlefield,” the caretaker prime minister added.
“The government reiterates its commitment to protecting all diplomatic missions and undertaking all necessary measures to achieve that.”
Rocket attacks on the US embassy and other American targets in Iraq have grown increasingly frequent in recent months. On January 21, three Katyusha rockets were fired at the Green Zone; an investigation ordered by Abdul-Mahdi into that incident has yet to yield answers.
On December 27, a rocket attack largely attributed to the Iran-backed Kataib Hezbollah militia killed a US civilian contractor at the K-1 military base in Kirkuk. The US conducted retaliatory airstrikes on December 29, killing and injuring 25 commanders and members of the militia; its supporters stormed the US embassy in response on January 1.
The US assassinated high-profile Iranian general Qassem Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Mohandis, deputy head of the Iran-backed Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF) in Baghdad on January 3. Iran then fired close to two dozen ballistic missiles at Iraqi bases housing US troops.
In a push spearheaded by the once-reformist Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, Iran-backed militias have called for US troops to be expelled from Iraq. Last weekend, hundreds of thousands of Iraqis attended a Sadr-sponsored protest against US troop presence in the country.
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