US troops intercept drone attacks on Iraqi airbase
ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – US troops intercepted drone attacks on a base in western Iraq early Wednesday amid heightened tensions in the Middle East over the Israeli-Hamas conflict, according to a media report.
The drone attacks were thwarted as they were about to strike the US troops stationed at Al-Asad Airbase in Iraq's Anbar province, where the American forces are stationed as part of the Global Coalition Against Daesh, at least two US officials told Reuters.
The officials did not elaborate on the identity of the entity behind the attacks. And no claim of responsibility has been made yet.
The attack comes as the US forces in the region have been placed on high alert recently, as the Hamas-Israel war continues. The country has also deployed two aircraft carrier strike groups to the eastern Mediterranean as a deterrent against expanding the conflict to a wider regional war.
US President Joe Biden is set to land in Tel Aviv on Wednesday in a show of support for the Jewish state after it was attacked by Hamas on Oct. 7, resulting in over 1,400 Israeli deaths and over a thousand injuries.
In the retaliatory Israeli attacks on Gaza, however, more than 2,700 Palestinians have been reportedly killed while thousands of others are injured, as the aerial campaign is ongoing amid an expected ground offensive on the enclave.
In one attack on Al-Ahli Arab Hospital, in Gaza City on Tuesday night, more than 500 people were reportedly killed. Numerous countries and Hamas have blamed Israel for the attack, while Tel Aviv denied that it had carried out the deadly strike, saying it was a "misfire" by the Islamic Jihad, a small Islamist militant group in the Gaza Strip, that along with Hamas, is in conflict with the Jewish state.
The bloody attack has drawn fierce reactions from Arab countries, canceling a planned summit of Middle Eastern leaders in the Jordanian capital Amman with President Biden on Wednesday.
Last Friday, thousands of protestors took to the streets of Baghdad to protest the Israeli attacks on Gaza. The country's highest Shiite authority Grand Ayatollah Ali Al Sistani condemned Israel and called on the international community to stand up to the "terrible brutality."