Pro-Iran group fires rockets at US Embassy in Baghdad

Attacks reflect threat ‘Tehran-backed militias present to Iraq’s sovereignty’

Three rockets were fired at the US Embassy in Iraq early on Thursday, the Iraqi army said, at the end of a day marked by rocket and drone attacks on bases hosting American forces in Iraq and Syria.

The embassy itself was not hit, the army said, but three nearby places in Baghdad’s heavily fortified Green Zone were.

A spate of recent attacks on US military and diplomatic facilities in Iraq has been blamed on pro-Iranian armed groups within a statesponsored paramilitary force.

US forces, who have 2,500 troops deployed in Iraq as part of an international anti-Daesh group coalition, have been targeted almost 50 times this year in the country, but the last few days have seen an increase in the frequency of attacks.

On Wednesday, 14 rockets were fired at an airbase hosting American troops in the western province of Anbar, causing minor injuries to two personnel, the coalition said.

A Shiite militant group called Revenge of Al-Muhandis Brigade claimed responsibility and vowed to defeat the “brutal occupation,” according to the US-based SITE intelligence group, which monitors extremist groups.

The rockets on Wednesday “landed on the base & perimeter” of the Ain Assad base, coalition spokesman Wayne Marotto tweeted, adding that local homes and a mosque were also damaged.

Iraqi security forces said the rocket launcher had been hidden inside a truck carrying bags of flour.

Asked about the renewed violence, State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters: “These attacks reflect and are representative of the threat that Iranbacked militias present fundamentally to Iraq’s sovereignty and to Iraq’s stability.”

“We can expect the cycle to continue,” said Marsin Alshamary, an Iraq specialist at the Brookings Institution, a Washington-based think tank.

Iraq researcher Hamdi Malik of

the Washington Institute said recent attacks by Iran-backed militias in Iraq and Eastern Syria were a way of bolstering support.

“By not acting when more of their people are killed, (pro-Iran groups) risk losing their credibility and legitimacy in the eyes of their own bases,” Malik said.

They are also cautious of “losing respect in the eyes of other components of the ‘axis of resistance’ in other countries in the region,” he said, referring to pro-Iranian forces in Syria, Lebanon and Yemen.

On the other side, Washington “is trying to curb the influence and the authority of these militias,” said Alshamary.