US strikes Iran-backed group that hit Iraq base

The US launched airstrikes on Thursday in Iraq, targeting the Iranian-backed militia members believed responsible for the rocket attack that killed and wounded American and British troops at a base north of Baghdad, the Pentagon said.

US officials said multiple strikes by US fighter jets hit five locations and mainly targeted Kataib Hezbollah weapons facilities inside Iraq. A Defence Department statement said the strikes targeted five weapons storage facilities “to significantly degrade their ability to conduct future attacks.”

The strikes marked a rapid escalation in tensions with Tehran and its proxy groups in Iraq, just two months after Iran carried out a massive ballistic missile attack against American troops at a base in Iraq. They came just hours after top US defence leaders threatened retaliation for the Wednesday rocket attack, making clear that they knew who did it and that the attackers would be held accountable.

“The United States will not tolerate attacks against our people, our interests, or our allies,” Defence Secretary Mark Esper said. “As we have demonstrated in recent months, we will take any action necessary to protect our forces in Iraq and the region.”

The Pentagon statement said the facilities hit in the precision strikes were used to store weapons used to target the US and coalition forces. It called the counterattack “defensive, proportional and in direct response to the threat” posed by the Iranian-backed militia groups.

US officials said the locations of the strikes were largely around the Baghdad region. One US official said there were two strikes at Jurf al-Sakher, one in Karbala, one at Al-Musayib, and one at Arab Nawar Ahmad. The official said the US expected casualties would be lower than 50, and said the main effort was to hit the weapons.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because some details about the operations had not yet been made public.

An official with the paramilitary Popular Mobilization Units told The Associated Press that two Iraqi federal police personnel were killed in Jurf al-Sakher.

An Iraqi military statement said the aerial “aggression” occurred at 1:15am in the areas of Jurf al-Sakher, Al-Musayib, Najaf and Alexandria on the headquarters of the Popular Mobilization Units, emergency regiments and commandos of the 9th division of the Iraqi army.

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Pentagon earlier on Thursday that President Donald Trump had given him the authority to take whatever action he deemed necessary.

“We’re going to take this one step at a time, but we’ve got to hold the perpetrators accountable,” Esper said. “You don’t get to shoot at our bases and kill and wound Americans and get away with it.”

At the White House, Trump had also hinted that a US counterpunch could be coming, telling reporters, “We’ll see what the response is.” And Army General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, told Pentagon reporters the US knows ”with a high degree of certainty” who launched the attack.