Rockets fired from Iraq at US forces in Syria

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Several rockets were fired from Iraqi territory at a base housing United States troops in northeast Syria on Sunday, an informed source told Rudaw.

Reuters, citing two Iraqi security forces, reported that at least five rockets were launched from Iraq towards a US military base in Syria.

The incident occurred the day Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia’ al-Sudani returned from a week-long trip to the US.

The rockets were launched from a location near Hama Agha and Birdya villages, near the town of Zummar on the Iraq-Syria border, an informed source told Rudaw’s Nasir Ali on the condition of anonymity.

The rockets targeted the Rumaylan (Rmeilan) base in Syria’s Hasaka province.

No group has immediately claimed responsibility and the US military has not commented.

This is the first reported attack on US forces in the region since February.

American forces came under more than 100 rocket and drone attacks at the end of last year and beginning of this year by Iran-aligned militia groups angry over Washington’s support for Israel in its war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, a network of shadow Iraqi militia groups affiliated with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), claimed responsibility for the majority of the attacks.

Baghdad has repeatedly vowed to pursue the perpetrators of the attacks against American interests, but has also warned Washington against taking any military action in the country without its approval.

Around 2,500 American troops in Iraq and 900 in Syria are leading an international coalition through Operation Inherent Resolve that has assisted Kurdish, Iraqi, and local Syrian forces in the fight against the Islamic State (ISIS), which once held swathes of land in Iraq and Syria but was declared territorially defeated in 2019.