‘Unannounced truce’ over as Iran-backed Iraqi militias attack US base

Iran-backed Iraqi militias said yesterday they were resuming attacks on US forces in the region – hours after rockets were fired from Iraq at an American base in Syria.

This was the first attack since early February, after an “unannounced truce” was reportedly arranged between the militias and the governments of Iraq and Iran.

Yesterday’s statement from the Islamic Resistance in Iraq – an umbrella group of militias that increased attacks on US forces in Iraq and Syria after the start of the Israel-Gaza war – was posted on a Telegram channel associated with Kataib Hezbollah, one of Iraq’s most powerful armed groups.

It said the decision to resume attacks was made after little progress was made in talks on the withdrawal of US forces from Iraq during Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia Al Sudani’s visit to Washington last week.

On Sunday night, five rockets were fired from the northern Iraqi town of Zummar, in Nineveh province, towards a US military base in north-eastern Syria.

“What happened a short while ago is the beginning,” said the Islamic Resistance in Iraq yesterday.

A US defence official told The National that a member of coalition forces on Sunday destroyed a launcher in self-defence “after reports of a failed rocket attack near the coalition base at Rumalyn, Syria. No US personnel were injured”.

Iraq’s security forces are conducting a search for those responsible near the Syrian border, Iraqi officials said.

Reuters also reported that at least one armed drone was launched at the Ain Al Asad airbase that hosts US troops in the province of Anbar in western Iraq, citing an unidentified US official.

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq announced a halt to attacks on American forces after a drone killed three US services personnel and wounded dozens of others at an outpost in Jordan at the end of January.