An airstrike hit a military base in southern Iraq housing the Iran-backed Kataeb Hezbollah group on Tuesday, two sources from the faction said.
The Jurf al-Nasr base, one of the main strongholds of the Tehran-backed group, has been struck several times since the outbreak of the Middle East war, which began in the early hours of the US–Israeli campaign against Iran.
The strikes have since spread to other areas, with more than ten fighters, mostly from Kataeb Hezbollah, killed across Iraq since Saturday.
A second source from the group said Tuesday’s strike only caused material damage.
Iraq, which had recently regained a measure of stability but had long been a proxy battleground between the US and Iran, said it did not wish to be drawn into the conflict. However, it has not been spared.
Several Iran-backed armed groups—collectively known as the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, to which Kataeb Hezbollah belongs—have said they will not remain “neutral” and have claimed responsibility for dozens of drone attacks on US bases.
A drone was shot down on Tuesday evening near Baghdad International Airport, the Iraqi government’s security media cell said.
Earlier, security forces announced the seizure of nine rockets and a launchpad that had been set up to target the airport, which includes a military base hosting American advisers and previously housed US-led coalition troops.
Since the war began, the autonomous Kurdistan region, which hosts US forces, has been the main target of drone attacks, most of which have been intercepted by air defences.
An AFP correspondent reported that a strike on Tuesday night hit Sulaimaniyah, the second-largest city in the autonomous region.
Kurdish security forces said a drone struck an area near a building that previously served as a United Nations office in the city, with no casualties reported.
Loud bangs were also heard in Erbil, the capital of the Kurdistan region, AFP journalists reported.
Earlier in the day, drone strikes blamed on Iran hit a camp hosting Iranian Kurdish fighters and their families in Iraqi Kurdistan, a local official and an exiled opposition group told AFP.
AFP photographers at the scene reported damage to rooms used as lodgings for the camp’s hospital staff.
Iraq’s Kurdish region hosts camps and rear bases operated by several Iranian Kurdish rebel groups, which have repeatedly faced cross-border strikes from Iran, a country that has long accused them of serving Western or Israeli interests.
