Attack on US Embassy in Baghdad as US-Israel war over Iran escalates | Military news

Iraq has been reluctant to be drawn into the war, but Iran and allied paramilitary forces have been attacking US bases there.

The rocket attack on the United States embassy in the Iraqi capital Baghdad comes as regional tensions rise amid the US-Israeli war over Iran.

Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammad Shia al-Sudani ordered his country’s security forces to pursue the perpetrators of the “terrorist act of firing projectiles toward the US Embassy,” but the statement did not specify who was responsible for the attack, according to his office.

“The perpetrators of this attack are committing a crime against Iraq, its sovereignty and its security. These rogue groups, operating outside the framework of the law, do not in any way represent the will of the Iraqi people,” al-Sudani’s office said in a post on Facebook.

An unnamed security official quoted by the AFP news agency said four rockets were fired towards the US embassy in Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone, which hosts government offices and diplomatic missions.

The attack was the first in the Green Zone since Israel and the US began attacking Iran last Saturday, sparking a war in the Middle East.

Several drones have been intercepted near Baghdad airport since the war began. A drone strike early Friday targeted a Baghdad airport complex that houses a military base and a US diplomatic facility.

It is not clear who is behind the attack. Iran and its allied Iraqi paramilitary group, the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), have launched dozens of attacks on US military bases and other facilities in Iraq over the past week.

Targeting PMF bases in Nineveh

The PMF, also known as Hashd al-Shaabi, is an umbrella organization of mostly Shiite armed groups, some of which have close ties to Iran.

Although they are now integrated into the Iraqi army, few have a reputation for acting on their own.

The Iraqi government said Saturday that a PMF fighter was killed after an attack on the group’s bases in Nineveh governorate.

An unidentified PMF official told AFP that an “airstrike, probably American”, hit a PMF base south of the city of Mosul in Nineveh.

In other developments, Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has targeted “separatist groups” in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq, Tasnim news agency said.

The Kurdish region, which hosts camps and rear bases operated by several Iranian Kurdish groups, has reportedly been approached by US officials about launching a ground operation inside Iran.

“If separatist groups in the region take any action against Iran’s territorial integrity, we will crush them,” the IRGC said.

An explosion was also heard in the city of Erbil in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq on Saturday. Since the start of the war, drones have been repeatedly intercepted over the city, which is home to a major US consulate complex.

Iraq, long a proxy battleground between the US and Iran, has said it does not want to be dragged into the conflict engulfing the Middle East.

Iranian President Masoud Pezheshkian said on Saturday that he would refrain from attacking neighboring states unless they launched attacks against his country from its territory.