Rocket Strikes Airbase In Iraq Housing U.S. Troops

Dillon BurroughsJanuary 5, 2022

A Katyusha rocket struck a military base in Iraq where U.S. troops were stationed at Baghdad’s international airport on Wednesday, according to a statement from the Iraqi military.

No injuries or casualties were reported.

“U.S. Army Colonel Wayne Marotto, spokesman for the U.S.-led international military coalition, tweeted that initial reports suggested the attack took place at 2:45 p.m. He said the damage was being assessed,” Reuters reported.

Tonight 4 #Katyusha rockets landed near “#Baghdad Diplomatic Support Center” known as “BDSC” located in Baghdad airport, hosting US diplomatic personnel & troops.

A fire broke out in the base due to the strike.

No casualties have been reported so far.#Iraq pic.twitter.com/n5BOY3icWh

— VAJRA: The Strategic Forum™ (@VajraForum) January 5, 2022

The attack was the third in three consecutive days targeting U.S. troops in the area. On Tuesday, U.S. forces in Iraq stopped a second armed drone attack targeting the area in Baghdad.

“Two explosive-laden drones were shot down on Tuesday by Iraq’s air defenses as they approached the Ain al-Asad air base, which hosts U.S. forces, west of Baghdad, an official of the U.S.-led international military coalition said,” Reuters reported on Tuesday.

Two armed drones were also shot down on Monday as they approached a military base housing U.S. forces near Baghdad’s international airport, according to a separate Reuters report.

“[A]n official of the U.S.-led international military coalition said the base’s defence system had engaged ‘two fixed-wing suicide drones. They were shot down without incident,’” the report stated.

“This was a dangerous attack on a civilian airport,” the coalition official also said, according to Reuters.

The attacks were likely associated with the January 3 two-year anniversary of the assassination of Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Quds Force Commander Qasem Soleimani by a U.S. drone strike at the Baghdad airport ordered by then-President Donald Trump.

As The Daily Wire reported in 2020, U.S. military forces reportedly killed two top Iranian military commanders involved in terrorism in Iraq in an airstrike in what analysts said was a significantly bigger deal than the killing of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi:

Iranian Major-General Qasem Soleimani, head of the Quds Force, and Iraqi militia commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis were the two Iranian military leaders who were killed. Al-Muhandis was in charge of the Iranian-linked Popular Mobilization Forces.

BBC reporter Ali Hashem reported: “My sources suggesting that commander of IRGC Quds force Qassem Suleimani and Deputy chief of PMU Abu Mahdi AlMuhandes were in the convoy hit by the U.S. airstrike near Baghdad airport Iraq.”

The first drone attack on Monday also occurred on the same day that Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi spoke about Soleimani’s death. Raisi claimed Trump must be put on trial for the general’s death.

“If Trump and (former secretary of state Mike) Pompeo are not tried in a fair court for the criminal act of assassinating General Soleimani, Muslims will take our martyr’s revenge,” Raisi said in the speech, according to Reuters.

“The aggressor, murderer and main culprit – the then president of the United States – must be tried and judged under the (Islamic) law of retribution, and God’s ruling must be carried out against him,” he added.

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