U.S. strikes sites in Iraq linked to Iran

WASHINGTON — The United States conducted a new round of airstrikes — the second in roughly a day — in Iraq early Wednesday, destroying two facilities used by Iranian proxies that had been targeting American and coalition troops, U.S. defense officials said.

The latest rounds in the tit-for-tat attacks between the United States and Iranian-backed fighters took place in Iraq, in a departure from the United States’ practice of striking mostly targets in Syria.

This time, the United States struck an operations center and a command-and-control center node south of Baghdad used by Kataib Hezbollah, a militia group in Iraq that is considered a proxy of Iran. Kataib Hezbollah’s political wing is part of the coalition of Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani of Iraq.

A defense official said the military could not provide a casualty assessment.

The United States has escalated its strikes recently. On Monday, an American military gunship fired on and killed three Iran-backed militants who the Pentagon said Tuesday were part of an attack on U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq. Unlike that exchange, which Pentagon officials said came after an American warplane in the area witnessed the ballistic missile attack on al-Asad air base and retaliated, the Wednesday morning strikes were planned, at least for a few hours.

In the earlier attack, a Defense Department spokesperson said, the militants had moved to their vehicle after firing missiles at al-Asad, one of the last remaining Iraqi bases where U.S. forces are stationed. The gunship, an AC-130, spotted them from the air, she said.

“The militants were targeted because the AC-130 was able to determine the point of origin,” the spokesperson, Sabrina Singh, said Tuesday. “We had an aircraft that was able to identify where the close-range ballistic missile was being shot from, and therefore we were able to take action.”