BAGHDAD – Baghdad’s international airport was attacked with three missiles overnight, Iraqi authorities said on Saturday.
The missiles were launched two days after dozens of people were killed in twin suicide blasts in the worst attack on the Iraqi capital in recent years.
“Three missiles were launched at Baghdad International Airport last night,” the Army Media Cell said in a statement on Saturday without providing details about the perpetrators.
“Two missiles fell outside the airport and a third hit a house in the al-Jihad neighborhood causing material damage, with no casualties reported,” the statement ran.
Missile attacks regularly target Baghdad airport and the capital’s fortified Green Zone that houses the Parliament, military bases, several governmental buildings and foreign embassies.
The most recent one was on Dec. 20, when eight Katyusha rockets were fired at the Green Zone, injuring an Iraqi soldier and causing minor damage to the US embassy.
Last night’s attack came a couple of days after a double suicide bombing at a street market in downtown Baghdad – claimed by the Islamic State terror organization – killed 32 people and wounded 110.
It was the first attack of its kind in the Iraq capital in over a year and the worst in three years, triggering a security crisis for the government.
Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kazemi sacked five of the Interior Ministry and Baghdad police senior officials following this week’s bombings.
The missile attacks on Baghdad increased after a US selective airstrike that killed the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps Quds Force commander Qasem Soleimani in the Iraqi capital a year ago.
One of the suspects in these attacks was the pro-Iranian Shiite militia Kataib Hezbollah, which proposed a truce in October on the condition that foreign troops would be withdrawn from the country.