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Missiles hit Green Zone and Iraq base housing US troops: security sources
BAGHDAD, Jan 5, 2020 (BSS/AFP) – Two mortar rounds hit the Iraqi capital’s
Green Zone Saturday and two rockets slammed into a base housing US troops,
security sources said, a day after a deadly American strike.
The precision drone strike outside the Baghdad airport on Friday killed
Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani, top Iraqi paramilitary chief Abu Mahdi al-
Muhandis and a clutch of other Iranian and Iraqi figures.
In Baghdad, mortar rounds on Saturday evening hit the Green Zone, the
high-security enclave where the US embassy is based, security sources said.
The Iraqi military said that one projectile hit inside the zone, while
another landed close to the enclave.
Sirens rang out at the US compound, sources there told AFP.
A pair of Katyusha rockets then hit the Balad airbase north of Baghdad,
where American troops are based, security sources and the Iraqi military
said.
Security sources there reported blaring sirens and said surveillance
drones were sent above the base to locate the source of the rockets.
The US embassy in Baghdad as well as the 5,200 American troops stationed
across the country have faced a spate of rocket attacks in recent months that
Washington has blamed on Iran and its allies in Iraq.
One attack last month killed a US contractor working in northern Iraq,
prompting retaliatory American air strikes that killed 25 hardline fighters
close to Iran.
Tensions boiled over on Friday when the US struck Soleimani’s convoy as it
drove out of the airport and US diplomats and troops across Iraq had been
bracing themselves for more rocket attacks.
BSS/AFP/MSY/0934 hrs