Another Attack Against US Troops at Military Base in Iraq

Rocket Attack Hits US Base in Iraqi Kurdistan, One Contractor Killed Five other people reported wounded, including a US soldier

Published 16 February 2021

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A new attack on a U.S. base in Iraq comes at a time of peak clamor by the Iraqi people to withdraw the occupying troops.

As the Iraqi people's clamor rises for the final withdrawal of U.S. occupation forces deployed in Iraq, ratified by the Arab country's Parliament, attacks on U.S. holdings are on the rise.

Many maintain that the U.S., in order to avoid or delay the withdrawal of their troops from Iraq, is behind a kind of covert plot that leads to this type of attacks, intending to present them as "victims" before public opinion and, incidentally, to create a feeling of insecurity that justifies their presence in Iraq.

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As recently as Monday, the media reported that Erbil International Airport and the U.S. base at Al-Hariri, near the airfield in the semi-autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan, had been the target of a missile attack.

Col. Wayne Marotto, a spokesman for the so-called U.S.-led coalition in Iraq, said in a message posted on his Twitter account that, according to initial reports, one civilian contractor was killed, and six people, including a U.S. serviceman, were wounded in the offensive.

Following its claim yesterday of targeting a US base in #Erbil, Guardians of Blood declared US troops will remain targets until they leave country. As I said last week, threat of Shi'a militant groups in #Iraq is growing w/ number of factions multiplyinghttps://t.co/39Y7I1a0r0 pic.twitter.com/eLdWa48UQY
— Rita Katz (@Rita_Katz) February 16, 2021

Hours later, the Telegram channel Saberin News reported that an emerging faction, called Saraya Aulia al-Dam, had claimed responsibility for the attack through a statement, in which it declared that it had carried out "a successful operation against the U.S. occupiers."

The group explained that its forces, once they were able to get within 7 kilometers of the al-Hariri base, launched "24 rockets, which hit the targets, precisely because of the inability of the occupiers' C-RAM [Counter Rocket, Artillery, and Mortar Dual Mission] anti-aircraft system to intercept them."

At the same time, the group detailed that, during the rain of projectiles, a Super King Air 350 model aircraft, belonging to the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), suffered substantial damages and an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), type MQ-1C, was utterly destroyed, besides promising that their actions against the U.S. invaders will be repeated to "avenge the blood of the martyrs."