US troops at shell-hit base

BAGHDAD, Feb 15, (AP): A mortar shell slammed into an airbase hosting US troops in northern Iraq late Thursday causing no casualties, two Iraqi security officials said.

The shell struck the K1 Iraqi military airbase in Kirkuk province, according to the security sources, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to brief the media. They provided no additional details.

A rocket attack on the same base in December triggered a chain of retaliatory events that led to

soaring US-Iran tensions and brought Iraq to the brink of war.

On Thursday, Iraqi forces conducted a search of the perimeter of the base and discovered a launching pad and 11 unused missiles, a statement from Iraq’s military said.

A rocket attack on K1 killed a US contractor on Dec 27 and led Washington to conduct an airstrike that killed top Iranian Gen Qassem Soleimani and senior Iraqi militia commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis.

The attack infuriated Shiite Iraqi lawmakers who voted to oust US troops from the country in a Jan 3 Parliament session. Iran retaliated for Soleimani’s killing with a barrage of missiles that targeted two airbases hosting American troops in Erbil and Ain al-Asad.

Iran and the US have since refrained from further escalation, but the issue of American troops has monopolized Iraqi politics.

Hundreds of Iraqi women took to the streets of central Baghdad and southern Iraq on Thursday in defiance of a radical cleric’s calls for gender segregation at anti-government protest sites.

An anti-government protest movement began Oct 1 to decry rampant corruption, poor services and unemployment in Baghdad and Iraq’s predominantly Shiite south. Over 500 have died since then under fire from security forces using live bullets and tear-gas to disperse crowds. The protests have been unique because they have drawn both men and women who have camped out alongside each other in protest squares, a rare occurrence in Iraq, a conservative majority Muslim country.