BAGHDAD: US strikes in the west of Iraq against armed pro-Iran groups killed at least 16 people, including civilians, and wounded 23, Iraqi government spokesman Bassem al-Awadi said on Saturday (3rd of Feb, 2024).
The strikes hit “locations in the Akashat and Al-Qaim regions, including areas where our security forces are stationed”, Awadi said in a statement.
The United States carried out the strikes on Friday in retaliation for the killing of three US military personnel in a drone attack on a base close to Jordan’s border with Syria and Iraq.
Washington blamed the unclaimed attack on the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, a loose alliance of pro-Iran fighters opposed to US support for Israel in Gaza.
Tehran has denied any links to the attack.
On Friday, a White House spokesperson said the United States had “warned the Iraqi government before the strikes”.
But Baghdad denied there had been any coordination with Washington prior to the bombings.
Iran will ‘respond firmly’ to US attack: President Raisi
A day earlier (2nd of Feb, 2024) Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi had issued a stern warning against any possible attack by the United States in retaliation for a strike that killed three American troops in Jordan.
The warning came as Israeli strikes killed three fighters, including an official of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, in Syria.
“We have said many times that we will not be the initiator of any war, but if a country, a cruel force wants to bully, the Islamic Republic of Iran will respond firmly,” Raisi said during a visit to a Gulf naval base operated by the Revolutionary Guards.
Iran’s “military power in the region was not and is not a threat to any country,” but a source of security that countries in the region can rely on and trust, he said as he toured the base in Bandar Abbas. “Today, the enemy has no ability to do anything against us; because they know that our forces are powerful and capable.”
The death of the American soldiers in a drone strike at a base in Jordan on Sunday marked the first US military losses to hostile fire in the region since the Gaza conflict on 7th October.
Meanwhile, three pro-Iran fighters were killed in Israeli strikes south of Damascus on Friday, a war monitor said, with Iranian media reporting an adviser from the Revolutionary Guards was among the dead.
The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said “three members of pro-Iran groups, including an Iranian and an Iraqi” were killed in “Israeli air strikes”.
Newspakistan.tv/APP/AFP
