BAGHDAD (Dispatches) – Three rockets on Sunday hit a Baghdad neighborhood near the high-security Green Zone where the U.S. embassy is located, an Iraqi security official said.
“Three Katyusha rockets fell in the Mansur district of Baghdad,” the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told AFP.
The rockets struck near a Red Crescent hospital, a bank and the district’s water management department, the source added.
The attack was the first to target the Green Zone since two rockets fired on July 29.
Anti-U.S. sentiments are rife in Iraq and the parliament has ordered foreign troops, including Americans, to leave the country.
Some 2,500 U.S. troops are still deployed in Iraq. They claim they will officially limit themselves to an “advisory” role to the Iraqi security forces from 2022.
Meanwhile, a military base in Syria’s eastern province of Dayr al-Zawr used by American troops and their allied militants was hit by a series of large explosions, a week after an attack on the al-Tanf base housing U.S. troops in southeastern Syria.
Sabereen News, a Telegram news channel associated with Iraqi Popular Mobilization Units, better known as Hashd al-Sha’abi, reported that four blasts were heard at the U.S. base inside the Conoco gas field on Saturday evening.
This is the latest in series of attacks on U.S.-run military bases in the eastern half of Syria.
The Conoco base, where Kurdish militants with the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) are also stationed, last came under attack in July with mortar shells and rockets. On October 20, the U.S.-run al-Tanf base in southern Syria was hit by drones and rockets, in an attack that Pentagon spokesman John Kirby described as “complex, coordinated and deliberate.”
United States officials said they believe the attack on al-Tanf involved as many as five drones laden with explosive charges, and that they hit both the U.S. side of al-Tanf base and the side where U.S.-backed militants reside.
Bomb fragments had also been found in areas where U.S. troops had been sleeping and stationing.
The U.S. military trains anti-Damascus militants at al-Tanf base, which is situated near Syria’s borders with Iraq and Jordan.
Washington has unilaterally declared a 55-kilometer “de-confliction zone” around the facility, and frequently threatened to target Syrian forces within the area.