US embassy in Baghdad attacked as US-Israel war on Iran escalates

Iraq did not want to be dragged into war, but Iran and its aligned paramilitary forces are attacking US hubs there.

The United States Embassy in the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, has been attacked with rockets as regional tensions spike amid the US-Israeli war on Iran.

Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani ordered his country’s security forces to pursue the perpetrators of the “terrorist act of launching projectiles toward the US embassy”, according to his office, though the statement did not indicate who was responsible for the attack.

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“The perpetrators of these attacks are committing an offence against Iraq, its sovereignty, and its security. These rogue groups that operate outside the framework of the law in no way represent the will of the Iraqi people,” al-Sudani’s office said in a post on Facebook.

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

The attack was the first to land in the Green Zone since Israel and the US began striking Iran last Saturday, leading to war in the Middle East.

Several drones have been intercepted near Baghdad airport since the start of hostilities. A drone attack early on Friday targeted the Baghdad airport complex, which houses a military base and a US diplomatic facility.

It was unclear who was behind the attack. Iran and its allied Iraqi paramilitary group, the Popular Mobilisation Forces (PMF), have launched dozens of attacks on US military bases and other facilities in Iraq over the past week.

PMF bases in Nineveh targeted

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

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

The Iraqi government said on Saturday that a PMF fighter was killed after strikes on bases belonging to the group in Nineveh governorate.

An unidentified PMF official told AFP that “an air strike, likely American”, hit a PMF base located south of the city of Mosul, which is in Nineveh.

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

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

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

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

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

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said on Saturday that Iran would refrain from attacking neighbouring states unless attacks were launched against his country from their territory.