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A dozen ballistic missiles focused Iraq’s northern metropolis of Arbil, together with US services, inflicting injury however no main casualties early on Sunday, safety forces within the autonomous Kurdistan area mentioned.
Native authorities mentioned the missiles got here from past the japanese border, suggesting that the supply of the hearth was Iran — a rustic that wields appreciable political and financial affect over its neighbour.
“Twelve ballistic missiles” on Sunday focused the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, Arbil, and the US consulate there, Kurdish safety forces mentioned.
“The missiles have been fired exterior the borders of Iraq and Kurdistan, (coming) extra exactly from the east,” the Kurdistan counter-terrorism unit mentioned in a press release.
Iraq, together with the Kurdistan area, is residence to a dwindling variety of US troops who led a coalition combating the Islamic State jihadist group.
Washington has routinely blamed rocket and drone assaults in opposition to its pursuits in Iraq on pro-Iran teams who demand the departure of the remaining troops.
However cross-border missile hearth is uncommon.
Sunday’s assault on Arbil comes almost per week after two officers from Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have been killed in Syria in a strike attributed to key US ally Israel.
The Revolutionary Guards, the Islamic republic’s ideological military, vowed revenge on Israel for that assault.
The inside ministry in Arbil mentioned a “new constructing” housing the US consulate, which is positioned in a residential suburb of the town, was hit in Sunday’s missile assault.
It “prompted materials damages in buildings and homes, however no casualties, besides one barely injured civilian,” a ministry assertion mentioned.
– Regional tensions –
An AFP correspondent in Arbil heard three explosions earlier than daybreak.
Washington mentioned there was “no injury or casualties at any US authorities facility”.
“We condemn this outrageous assault and show of violence,” a State Division spokesperson mentioned.
Native tv channel Kurdistan24, whose studios will not be removed from the US consulate, posted photos on social networks of its broken places of work, with collapsed sections of false ceiling and damaged glass.
“We condemn this terrorist assault launched in opposition to a number of sectors of Arbil,” Masrour Barzani, the prime minister of Iraqi Kurdistan, mentioned in a press release.
“We name on the inhabitants to stay calm”.
The well being ministry in Arbil mentioned there have been no casualties.
Iraq noticed a surge in rocket and armed-drone assaults in the beginning of the yr as Iran and its allies commemorated the second anniversary of the demise of Iranian basic Qassem Soleimani and his Iraqi lieutenant Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, killed by American drone hearth in Iraq in January 2020.
In late January, six rockets have been fired at Baghdad Worldwide Airport, inflicting no casualties.
Iran itself responded to the January 2020 killing of Soleimani by firing missiles at army bases in Iraq housing US forces.
The assault in opposition to Arbil and US pursuits comes at a fragile time in negotiations between Iran and world powers on restoring a 2015 nuclear deal that eased sanctions on Tehran in alternate for limits on its nuclear programme.
The US unilaterally pulled out of that deal underneath then president Donald Trump in 2018 and proceeded to slap swingeing new sanctions on Tehran, which in flip stepped again from a lot of its nuclear commitments.
The negotiations in Vienna have concerned Iran and remaining events Russia, China, Britain, France and Germany immediately, and the US not directly.
Negotiators had repeatedly mentioned recently they have been near a deal, however Western sanctions on Russia over its invasion of Ukraine — and Moscow’s response to that — have sophisticated the Iran dialogue.
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© Agence France-Presse
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