Drone attack against Iraqi intelligence services kills one in Baghdad

BAGHDAD - An Iraqi officer was killed on March 21 in a drone attack targeting an Iraqi intelligence services building in a residential Baghdad neighbourhood, the agency said, as the Middle East war reverberates across the country.

Iraq has been unwillingly drawn into the Middle East conflict with strikes targeting Iran-backed groups, which in turn have claimed near-daily attacks on US interests, mostly in Iraq but also across the wider region.

At around 10am local time (3pm, Singapore time) the Iraqi National Intelligence Service was attacked in a drone strike, said General Saad Maan, head of the Iraqi government’s security media unit.

“An officer was martyred,” the Iraqi intelligence agency said in a statement, condemning the strike as a “terrorist attack carried out by rogue elements”.

No group immediately claimed responsibility.

An officer was also wounded in the attack, according to a security official and an emergency services source.

The attack occurred in the affluent Mansour neighbourhood, during celebrations marking Eid al-Fitr.

Earlier, an Iraqi security official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the attack targeted a “telecommunications building” with the National Intelligence Service, which cooperates with US advisers in Iraq as part of an international anti-jihadist coalition.

He later said the targeted building houses a unit responsible for monitoring and tracking the recent strikes and rocket fire across the city.

Another drone, filming the operation, crashed into a private members sports club popular with Iraqi elite and foreign diplomats, according to the same source.

Drone attacks

Since the start of the war, pro-Iran armed groups have carried out several drone strikes against the US embassy and a logistics centre at the international airport.

Overnight from March 20 to 21, at least three drone attacks targeted a US diplomatic and logistics hub that houses US military personnel at Baghdad International Airport, according to two security officials.

However, the US embassy was not targeted for the third consecutive night, after the influential Iran-backed group Kataeb Hezbollah pledged on March 19 to observe a five-day pause on attacking the embassy, under certain conditions.

The Iran-backed group, designated by Washington as a “terrorist organisation”, listed several conditions, including Israel ceasing its bombardment of the southern suburbs of Beirut.

Separately, a fighter from the Hashed al-Shaabi former paramilitary coalition was killed late on March 20 in a strike on a military airfield in northern Iraq. The group blamed the attack on the US and Israel.

On March 19, the Pentagon acknowledged for the first time that combat helicopters had carried out strikes against pro-Iran armed groups in Iraq during the latest conflict. AFP