At least five rockets were fired on Sunday from the Iraqi city of Zummar towards a US military base in northeastern Syria.they said to Reuters two Iraqi security sources.
The attack on US forces is the first since early February, when Iranian-backed groups in Iraq stopped their attacks on US troops.
The attack comes a day after Iraqi Prime Minister, Mohammed Shia al-Sudaniwill return from a visit to the United States and meet with President Joe Biden at the White House.
Two security sources and a senior army officer said a rocket launcher fixed to the back of a small truck had been parked in the border town of Zumar with Syria.
The military official said the truck caught fire with an explosion of unfired rockets at the same time as fighter jets flew overhead.
“We cannot confirm that the truck was bombed by American fighter jets unless we investigate it,” a military official said on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the incident.
Iraqi security forces were deployed to the area and launched a search for the perpetrators who fled the area using another vehicle, a security official based in the city of Zummar said.
An army official said the truck was seized for further investigation. and initial investigation shows that it was destroyed by an air raid.
“We are communicating with coalition forces in Iraq to share information about this attack,” the officer added.
The attacks came a day after a large explosion at a military base in Iraq early Saturday killed a member of an Iraqi security force that includes Iranian-backed groups. The force commander said it was an attack, while the military said it was investigating and that there were no fighter jets in the sky at the time.
Iraqi authorities said Saturday that one person died and eight others were injured in a burstpresumably caused by a air attackin a military base of the influential pro-Iran Shiite group Popular Multitudewith the presence of the Arab country’s Army, located north of Baghdad.
The Security Cell, spokesperson for the Iraqi Army and Police, explained in a statement that the “explosion, which caused several fires, occurred at 1.00 local time on Saturday (11.00 GMT) at the Kalsu base and caused the death of a member of the Popular Crowd and injuries to eight peopleincluding an Army soldier.”
He pointed out that it is a joint base which houses the headquarters of the Army and Police, as well as the Popular Multitude militias, in the governorate of Babel, located about 80 kilometers southeast of the Iraqi capital.
The official note neither confirmed nor denied the statements of Iraqi security sources who assured last morning that it was an attack “of unknown planes“, and highlighted that “a specialized higher technical committee (…) has been created to determine the causes of the explosion and fires” at the base.
(With information from Reuters)
