BAGHDAD (Dispatches) –
Several rockets on Thursday hit the heavily fortified Green Zone that houses the U.S. embassy in central Baghdad, wounding a woman and a child, the Iraqi military said.
“Several rockets were fired from the Doura neighborhood in southern Baghdad, targeting headquarters of diplomatic missions, which are protected by the Iraqi forces,” the media office of the Iraqi Joint Operations Command (JOC) said in a statement.
One of the rockets fell on a school building inside the zone, wounding a woman and a female child, according to the statement.
Meanwhile, an Interior Ministry source anonymously told Xinhua that the air defense weapons protecting the U.S. embassy opened fire on two rockets and blew them up before reaching their targets, while a third rocket landed on a school building, causing damage.
There were no immediate reports of casualties at the U.S. embassy and no group has claimed responsibility for the attack yet.
Reuters earlier cited two Iraqi military officials, who also spoke on condition of anonymity, as saying that at least two Katyusha rockets were fired at the U.S. embassy, adding that they were shot down before reaching the compound.
The attack was the latest in a series of attack targeting U.S. interests in the Arab country.
Last month, at least two Katyusha rockets landed in Baghdad’s highly fortified Green Zone.
On July 8, at least three Katyusha rockets landed within the Green Zone, two days after several drones targeted the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, with the weapon systems set up to fortify the facility firing at least four times to try to down the aircraft.
Back then, a faction of Iraqi Hashd al-Sha’abi forces rejected the involvement of the anti-terror resistance fighters in the July 8 rocket attack against Baghdad’s Green Zone.
“The U.S. embassy has so far not had a place in the equation of reactions from the Iraqi Resistance Coordination Committee. Should we decide to attack the facility, it will be struck with precision-guided munitions, not Katyusha rockets, to prevent collateral damage,” Qais Khazali, who leads the Asa’ib Ahl al-Haq resistance group, wrote in a tweet.
He added that Katyusha rockets are notorious for missing their targets and hitting urban areas, and Iraqi resistance groups will not utilize them if the U.S. embassy in Baghdad comes into such an equation.
Over the past months, convoys carrying logistical equipment belonging to the U.S. military as well as U.S. military camps in Iraq have also come under several attacks.
Iraqi lawmakers approved a bill that requires the government to end the presence of all foreign military forces led by the U.S. in the country.
Last year, Baghdad and Washington reached an agreement on ending the presence of all U.S. combat troops in Iraq by the end of the year.