Three rockets launched into centre of Baghdad
Three rockets launched late on Saturday towards the US embassy in Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone missed their target, police have said.
All three were Katyusha rockets – a rail-mounted weapon based on a Second World War-era Soviet design.
They were fired from the Bayaa district, a Shiite area in south-western Baghdad, a police officer said.
Two landed on the streets of the upmarket Mansour district. The third landed in Al Harthiya.
They missed the Green Zone, home to important government offices and western embassies, the officer said. No casualties were reported. No group has claimed responsibility for the attack. But the Sabreen news channel on Telegram, which is affiliated with Iran-backed Shiite militias, was the first to report the attack.
Some analysts have linked Sabreen to Asaib Ahl Al Haq, a militia formed with Iranian backing in 2006.
After the defeat of ISIS in late 2017, pro-Iranian militias and politicians began to call for the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq.
Tension escalated after the assassination of senior Iranian general Qassem Suleimani, whose convoy was blown up in a US drone strike shortly after he landed at Baghdad airport in January last year.
The leader of the Kataib Hezbollah militia, Abu Mahdi Al Muhandis, was also killed in the attack.
Iran-backed groups and members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in Tehran promised to avenge their deaths.
There have since been almost daily rocket and bomb attacks against US troops, the country’s embassy and convoys that supply international coalition bases.
In October last year, a ceasefire was announced by a group of powerful Iran-backed militias to allow the withdrawal of US forces. But the militias have not honoured their promise.
During the past 18 months, the number of US troops in Iraq has been reduced from about 3,000 to 2,500.
Those who remain continue to protect the US embassy and train Iraqi forces.
Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa Al Kadhimi visited Washington in July and sealed an agreement to formally end the US combat mission in Iraq by the end of this year.
However, Washington has repeatedly said its troops will continue to operate in the country as advisers to the Iraqi military.