Iraq rocket hit kills contractor

Baghdad, Feb. 16: A USled coalition contractor was killed and an unspecified number of other civilians were wounded when a barrage of rockets struck outside an airport near where US forces are based in northern Iraq, Iraqi security and coalition officials said. More than a dozen rockets hit late Monday in areas between the civilian international airport in the city of Irbil in Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdish-run region and the nearby base hosting US troops.

A little-known Shiite militant group calling itself Saraya Awliya alDam, Arabic for Guardians of Blood Brigade, claimed responsibility for the attack. US Army Col. Wayne Marotto said Tuesday a civilian contractor with the coalition who was not a US citizen was killed. He did not provide further details about the citizenship of the killed contractor. Marotto also said a US military serviceman and eight civilian contractors were wounded in the assault.

An unspecified number of Iraqi and Kurdish civilians were wounded as rockets hit busy residential areas close to the airport. The coalition confirmed that 107 mm rockets, a total of 14, were launched, with three impacting an airbase hosting US troops. The Trump administration had said that the death of a US contractor would be a red line and provoke a US escalation in Iraq against Iranbacked groups.

The December 2019 killing of a US civilian contractor in a rocket attack in province of Kirkuk sparked a tit-for-tat fight on Iraqi soil that brought the country to the brink of a proxy war.

The official position of President Joe Biden is not yet clear.