Four Iran-linked militants killed in airstrikes in Iraq | US-Israel war over Iran news

Separately, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have targeted a US base in the Kurdistan Region, as PM Sudani rejects attempts to drag Iraq into the war.

Iraq’s prime minister told United States Secretary of State Marco Rubio that his country should not be used as a launchpad for attacks in the Middle East war, the Iraqi government said.

Several strikes were launched across Iraq on Tuesday, mostly targeting groups affiliated with the Shiite Popular Mobilization Force (PMF).

Iraq’s neighbor Iran, against which the US and Israel launched a war on February 28, as well as the Gulf, which has been hit by Iranian missile and drone strikes.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Tuesday it had hit a US base in Iraq’s Kurdistan region. “The headquarters of the offensive US army at Al-Harir Air Base in the Kurdistan Region was targeted by five missiles,” he said in a statement on his Telegram channel.

Earlier on Tuesday, the Iran-backed Kataib Imam Ali group, which is affiliated with the PMF, accused the US of killing four of its members and wounding 12 in an airstrike in northern Iraq.

The group claimed its fighters were killed in an “American offensive” against their positions in the Dibis district of Kirkuk province.

The bombing hit a position belonging to the PMF, a coalition of factions now incorporated into Iraq’s regular army and which includes powerful Iran-backed groups.

The Iraqi government’s Security Intelligence Cell confirmed that several PMF fighters were killed in a “bomb attack” in Kirkuk, although it did not strike anyone.

In a phone call with Rubio, Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammad Shia al-Sudani stressed “the importance of ensuring that Iraqi airspace, territory and waters are not used for any military operation targeting neighboring countries or the region,” the prime minister’s media office said Tuesday.

Sudan rejected “any attempt to drag the country into ongoing conflicts” and “violation of its airspace by any party”.

‘Iraq is becoming a battlefield’

Since the beginning of the Middle East war, bases belonging to the PMF have been hit several times with strikes against pro-Iranian fighters.

Iraq, long a proxy battleground between the US and Iran, had said it did not want to be dragged into the war. However, Iraq was drawn into the conflict from the start, with attacks blamed on the US and Israel against Iran-backed groups, which it claims have carried out attacks on US bases in Iraq and the wider region.

Drone and rocket attacks hit Baghdad International Airport, which is home to a military base and US diplomatic facility, as well as oil fields and facilities.

On Monday night, two drones were shot down near a military base, a security source told AFP news agency.

The autonomous Kurdistan region in the north, which hosts US forces, has been a prime target of drone strikes, but these have largely been intercepted.

“All of these attacks highlight how much more Iraq is becoming a battlefield in this expansion of night and early morning,” Al Jazeera’s Assed Baig on the Middle East war reported from Erbil, Iraq.

Late on Monday, Kurdish counter-terrorism forces said US-led coalition forces had “shot down three explosive-laden drones” over Erbil, the capital of the Kurdistan Region.

A drone fell near the UAE consulate in Erbil, his statement added.

A Kurdish security source told AFP the drone was aimed at the US consulate but missed its target and instead fell near the Emirati mission.

In a statement on Tuesday, the Kurdistan Regional Government said it “strongly condemns the brutal, unprovoked attacks targeting civilians and cultural institutions and aimed at undermining diplomatic efforts in total violation of international laws”.