Baghdad | A drone attack took place on Friday morning on a military base housing US soldiers in Iraqi Kurdistan (North), without causing any casualties, as we learned on Saturday from the international anti-jihadist coalition in Iraq.
A spokesman for the coalition led by Washington, Colonel Wayne Maroto, told AFP that “a drone hit a coalition base in Kurdistan, and there were no casualties or damage.”
According to local Kurdish newspapers, the attack targeted the Harir base, 70 km northeast of Erbil, the capital of the autonomous Kurdistan region.
The attack was carried out as Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi is due to arrive in Washington on Monday to discuss the US military presence in Iraq with President Joe Biden.
The United States still has 2,500 soldiers deployed in Iraq out of 3,500 personnel in the international coalition.
Their departure has been demanded by powerful pro-Iran factions, to which dozens of attacks against US interests in Iraq have been attributed in recent months.
In a statement issued on Friday, the “Coordination Committee of the Iraqi Resistance Factions” renewed its call for the “complete withdrawal of all American forces” and “an end to the occupation”, otherwise the attacks would continue.
The United States returned to Iraq in 2014 at the head of an international coalition to help Iraqi forces defeat the jihadist Islamic State (ISIS), officially defeated in the country in 2017.
However, members of the extremist organization are still in the mountains and desert regions, and its sleeper cells can still strike.
The majority of US forces have been withdrawn under President Donald Trump. The soldiers who are still officially deployed have a mission to train and advise the Iraqi army and counterterrorism forces.
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