US soldiers injured in Iraq rocket attack

WASHINGTON－The US Department of Defense said that three US service members were injured in a rocket attack on Camp Taji military base in Iraq, days after a similar rocket attack that caused US casualties.

Two of the three wounded US soldiers were seriously injured and taken to a military hospital in Baghdad, a Pentagon spokesman said on Saturday.

On Wednesday, a similar rocket attack on Camp Taji killed two US soldiers and one British service member, and wounded 14 others. The next day, US military conducted strikes against five facilities of Kataib Hezbollah, or KH, across Iraq, saying the strikes could degrade their ability to conduct future attacks against coalition forces.

Wednesday's attack on Camp Taji was the deadliest to target US troops in Iraq since a rocket attack on an Iraqi base, which killed a US contractor in late December. That attack set in motion a series of attacks that brought Iraq to the brink of war.

After the contractor was killed, the United States launched airstrikes targeting KH, which in turn led to protests at the US embassy in Baghdad.

A US drone strike in Baghdad then killed Qassem Soleimani, a top Iranian commander responsible for expeditionary operations across the wider Middle East. Iran then struck back with a ballistic missile attack on US forces in Iraq, the country's most direct assault on the US since the US embassy in Teheran was seized in 1979.

In the latest attack on Saturday, at least 25 rockets impacted Camp Taji hosting Coalition troops, some 20 km north of Baghdad, the US-led coalition force said.

The US and Iran stepped back from further attacks after the Soleimani incident. A senior US official said in late January, when US-Iran tensions had cooled, that the killing of Americans constituted a red line that could spark more violence.

Commander of US Central Command Kenneth McKenzie told a Pentagon news briefing on Friday that the threat to the US in the region remains very high, and that tensions have not eased.

The tit-for-tat between the US military and the Shia militia group may lock them into a cycles of attacks and reprisals.

More than 5,000 US troops have been deployed in Iraq to support Iraqi forces in battles against the Islamic State, mainly for training and advisory purposes.

Xinhua - Agencies