Ten rockets fell on an Iraqi military base sheltering American soldiers near Baghdad on Wednesday, the Iraqi army said, leaving several people dead and injured, an official with the Washington-led international anti-jihadist coalition in Iraq said.
Two soldiers, one American and the other British, as well as an American subcontractor were killed, said an American military official.
This attack, the 22nd since late October against American interests in Iraq, is the deadliest recorded against a base sheltering foreign soldiers for several years.
Rocket attacks on US soldiers, diplomats, or installations in Iraq have killed an American contractor and an Iraqi soldier in the past.
Washington accuses pro-Iran factions
None of these attacks have been claimed, but Washington accuses the pro-Iranian armed factions of being responsible for them.
The number of rockets launched on Wednesday is particularly high.
Two days after the death of an American in the firing of 30 rockets at an Iraqi military base in Kirkuk at the end of 2019, the American army had struck five bases, in Iraq and Syria, of a pro-Iran armed faction, the Hezbollah brigades.
Tensions then increased between Washington and Tehran, leading to the assassination in Baghdad of the powerful Iranian general Qassem Soleimani and his Iraqi lieutenant in an American strike, as well as to Iranian bombings of Iraqi bases sheltering American soldiers in reprisals.
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The international coalition formed against the Islamic State (IS) group in 2014 and led by the United States has dozens of member states and thousands of soldiers in Iraq. Because if the IS has lost its territory, it retains clandestine cells still capable of carrying out attacks.
The Iraqi parliament recently voted to expel 5,200 American soldiers from the country, a decision that has yet to be implemented by the government. But Iraq has been plunged into political slump for months.
The government which has resigned since December has still not been replaced due to the lack of an agreement in the most fragmented parliament in the recent history of Iraq.