Pentagon spokesman Major General Pat Ryder said in a press briefing on Tuesday that in previous days “Iran malign militia groups conducted two unsuccessful attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria. These are the first attacks on coalition facilities since February 4.”
Late on Sunday night, several rockets were launched from Iraq, targeting the Rumaylan (Rmeilan) base which houses US troops in Syria’s Hasaka province. The rockets were launched from a location near the Hama Agha and Birdya villages, close to the town of Zummar on the Iraq-Syria border, an informed source told Rudaw’s Nasir Ali on the condition of anonymity.
A day later, US troops shot down two drones targeting the Ain al-Asad base in Iraq’s western Anbar province, unnamed American officials told AFP. Following reports on the attack Kataib Hezbollah said that “No statement has been issued by the Kataib Hezbollah Islamic Resistance in the past 48 hours, and what the media is circulating is fabricated news.”
The attacks came a day after explosions occurred at the Kalsu military base in Babil province, south of Baghdad, which houses members of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF, or Hashd al-Shaabi). The US military denied responsibility.
“We call on the government of Iraq to take all necessary steps to ensure the safety of U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria against attacks from these groups,” said Ryder, adding that the US “will not hesitate to defend our forces”.
The attacks took place days after Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani returned from his trip to the United States, where he met American President Joe Biden and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, discussing several issues including cooperation in the fields of economy, security, and energy.
In their meeting, Biden told Sudani that Washington is "committed to the security of our personnel and partners in the region, including Iraq,” describing the US-Iraq partnership as “critical.”
The trip marked Sudani’s first time visiting the US as the prime minister of Iraq.
American troops and bases in Iraq and Syria came under more than 165 rocket and drone attacks by Iranian-backed Iraqi armed groups condemning Washington’s support for Israel in its war against the Gaza Strip, between mid-October to February. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, a network of shadow Iraqi militia groups affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), has claimed responsibility for most of the attacks.
The US has responded on several occasions, sparking outcry from the Iraqi government and calls from hardline Iraqi Shiite politicians to expel coalition forces from the country.
In early January, an American drone strike targeted the PMF’s Harakat al-Nujaba in Baghdad, killing two of its members, including former commander Mushtaq Talib al-Saeedi, better known as Abu Taqwa. He was also deputy commander of the PMF’s Baghdad Belt Operations.
A day after the deadly strike, Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani announced his government was working to establish a committee to expel the international coalition from the country.
After a drone strike in late January killed three US troops in Jordan, Washington retaliated against the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Quds Force (IRGC-QF) and Iran-aligned groups in Iraq and Syria, by hitting more than 85 targets on February 2, killing at least 16 PMF fighters and injuring another 36, in Iraq’s western Anbar province, near the Syrian border.
Days later, a late-night drone strike in eastern Baghdad’s Mashtal neighborhood killed another three people, including Abu Baqer al-Saadi, a leading commander of the Kataib Hezbollah armed group.
Washington’s attacks drew the anger of Iraqi officials who condemned them as “a violation of Iraqi sovereignty and an undermining of the efforts of the Iraqi government” at a time when the government and hardline Iraqi politicians are seeking to expel forces of the US-led coalition from the country.
Yehia Rasool, the military spokesperson for Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani, said in a statement following the attack that US military actions in Iraq “would undermine the established understandings and hinder the initiation of bilateral dialogue.”
He warned that “This trajectory compels the Iraqi government more than ever to terminate the mission of this coalition, which has become a factor for instability and threatens to entangle Iraq in the cycle of conflict.”
Baghdad is currently engaged in talks with the US as part of the US-Iraq Higher Military Commission (HMC), to wind down the presence of the US-led coalition against the Islamic State (ISIS). The talks were instigated by Iraq’s anger over repeated US airstrikes on its territory.
Earlier this month, the inaugural principals meeting of the HMC took place in Baghdad headed by the Iraqi army’s chief of staff General Abdul Amir Rashid Yarallah, and US Central Command (CENTCOM) commander General Michael “Erik” Kurilla.
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 2019.
