A hotel in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, was hit as it thwarted an attack on the US embassy | Conflict news

No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, which comes amid an escalating Israeli-American war over Iran.

A major hotel in central Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone was struck by a drone, amid reports that Iraqi air defense forces had foiled an attack on the United States embassy.

The strike on Monday evening hit the top floor of the Al-Rashid Hotel, causing damage but no casualties, two Iraqi security officials quoted by the Associated Press (AP) news agency said.

No group claimed responsibility for the attack.

Two Katyusha rockets were intercepted that evening near the US embassy in the Green Zone, which houses diplomatic missions and international organizations and government offices, security sources told the Reuters news agency.

Earlier on Monday, Iran-backed Kataib Hezbollah announced that the paramilitary group’s top security official, Abu Ali al-Askari, had been killed, without giving details on the circumstances.

Kataib Hezbollah is one of the largest groups in the Popular Mobilization Force (PMF) operating in Iran, which was established in 2014 to counter the lightning advance of ISIL (ISIS).

On the same day, AP reported that six PMF fighters were killed in a strike on a checkpoint in western Iraq’s Anbar province, and two were killed in a separate strike on a PMF brigade headquarters in the same area.

Two Iraqi security officials told the AP that the Majnoon oil field in Iraq’s southern Basra province was targeted by two drones. No casualties were reported and it was not immediately clear if any facilities were damaged.

Iraq’s oil industry has been severely affected by the US and Israel’s war on Iran and Iran’s closure of the Strait of Hormuz, a key oil trade corridor.

Iraqi Oil Minister Hayan Abdul-Ghani said in a video statement on Monday that a pipeline from the northern city of Kirkuk to Turkey would be operational within a week, allowing the country to resume oil exports disrupted by the ongoing war.

On Monday, air defense units intercepted and shot down the drone near Erbil airport in the semi-autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq, according to security sources.