TEHRAN (Dispatches) – Iran has condemned all acts of aggression targeting foreign diplomatic missions in Iraq after reports emerged of attacks of such attacks in Baghdad Thursday.
On Tuesday, an improvised explosive device targeted a British Embassy vehicle returning from Baghdad airport, an Iraqi security official said.
The attack, the first against a British government vehicle in Iraq in more than a decade, took place just outside the capital’s high-security Green Zone that houses the British Embassy and other diplomatic missions.
Two Katyusha rockets also targeted the U.S. Embassy inside the premises. And on Monday, two explosive devices targeted a U.S.-led coalition equipment convoy in the city, the Iraqi military said in a statement.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeid Khatibzadeh said Iranian diplomats and diplomatic facilities have also been targeted in the past, urging Baghdad to step up protection of foreign diplomatic missions and "ensure that their routine operations are not disrupted by such instances of violence”.
Last year, a group of rioters stormed the Islamic Republic’s diplomatic mission in the holy Iraqi city of Najaf and set it ablaze. The Iranian consulate in the port city of Basra had also been torched the year before by certain elements who hijacked peaceful protests against economic austerity and corruption.