Civilian contractor is killed in rocket attack on US base in Kurdistan's capital
A civilian contractor was killed and a U.S. service member was injured when rockets fell on the airfield where U.S. and coalition forces are based in the capital of Iraq’s northern Kurdistan region Monday, the military said.
Five other civilian contractors were also wounded, Army Col. Wayne Marotto, a military spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition, said in a statement on Twitter, citing initial reports.
Marotto did not reveal the nationality of the dead contractor.
Several civilians off base were also injured by rockets that fell near the base, Kurdistan Regional Government officials said separately.
At least two rockets fell on the international airport in Irbil and another overflew it, Kurdistan’s Directorate General of Counter Terrorism said in a Facebook post. Later, it posted a government statement from the region’s Interior Ministry saying several people were injured.
An investigation was already underway, the statement said, advising residents to remain home until further notice.
Security camera footage showed one explosion hit on a busy roadway in a residential area, spraying fragments into the air. It was posted on Twitter by the news site Rudaw, which also reported that a rocket hit an apartment building and wounded two people.
Several videos shared online showed a large fire visible in the dark from hundreds of yards away. It was not immediately clear where the fire was located, but one area resident posted that it was on the edge of the airport.
The U.S.-led coalition did not immediately respond to an inquiry about the situation at the military base on the airfield.
Photos shared online also showed damaged cars, while other videos captured the sound of announcements at the U.S. Consulate General in Irbil telling personnel to seek cover away from windows and await further instructions.
The airfield was hit by a barrage of six rockets on Sept. 30, 2020, which officials have said were fired from a truck in nearby Nineveh province, which falls under the control of the federal government of Iraq.
Attacks on bases housing U.S. forces, often involving 107mm Katyusha rockets, have become a frequent occurrence in the past nearly two years, particularly in and around Baghdad, where they have also hit civilian areas near military and diplomatic facilities.
The U.S. has attributed the attacks to Iraq’s Shiite militias, which are backed by Iran and have pushed for the withdrawal of American troops, some 2,500 of which remain in the country assisting security forces battling the Islamic State group.
Following a deadly rocket attack at a base near Kirkuk that killed a U.S. civilian contractor in late 2019, the Pentagon launched airstrikes on militia sites, leading to a series of escalations with the militias and Iran in early 2020. The episode culminated with Tehran launching a dozen missiles at the Irbil airport and western Iraq’s Al Asad Air Base in January 2020, which wounded over 100 American troops.
The U.S. also retaliated with strikes on militia sites in Iraq and Syria last March, after rockets fell on Camp Taji, killing two U.S. troops and a British medic and wounding over a dozen others.
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