Explosive drone attack targeting US-led coalition forces in Iraq thwarted

Iraqi Kurdistan’s counter-terrorism service said that an “explosive drone” targeting US-led coalition forces at Arbil airport in Iraq was downed on Thursday, marking the second such attack within 24 hours. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, a coalition of Iran-linked groups opposing US support for Israel, has claimed responsibility for numerous drone and missile attacks against coalition forces deployed since 2014 against the Islamic State (IS) group. The counter-terrorism service of Iraqi Kurdistan said that in the latest attack, an “explosive drone launched by outlawed militias and targeting the military base of the international anti-IS coalition at Arbil airport was shot down” on Thursday. Washington has counted more than 100 attacks against its forces in Iraq and Syria since October 17 and responded to several of them by bombing the sites of pro-Iran armed groups in Iraq. On January 4, a US drone strike in central Baghdad killed two members of Harakat al-Nujaba, a faction of Hashed al-Shaabi — a collection of mainly pro-Iran former paramilitary units now integrated into Iraq’s armed forces. The following day, Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, whose government is backed by Tehran-aligned parties, reiterated his “firm” determination to bring an end to the deployment of foreign troops in Iraq. There are approximately 2,500 US troops in Iraq and around 900 in Syria. With inputs from AFP.