Iraq lodges complaint with UNSC over US airstrikes
Iraq says it has lodged a formal complaint with the UN Security Council (UNSC) over a string of airstrikes carried out by the United States against multiple targets in the West Asian country.
The spokesman for the Iraqi Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ahmed al-Sahaf, said Tuesday that the ministry has sent two protest letters to the UNSC over the attacks, which targeted positions of the Iraqi army, police and Iraqi Popular Mobilization Units (PMU), better known by the Arabic name Hashd al-Sha’abi, on Thursday night.
He described the airstrikes as a “hostile act and a clear violation of the terms of US military presence” in Iraq.
The attacks killed three Iraqi soldiers, two police officers and a civilian worker, and damaged an unfinished civilian airport.
The Iraqi military says the US strikes amount to a targeted act of aggression against Iraq’s armed forces and a violation of its sovereignty.
On Friday, Baghdad summoned the US and British ambassadors to Baghdad over the aggression which “has clearly indicated repeated US violations against Iraq, its people and armed forces.”
That deadly attack was conducted hours after the US-led military coalition purportedly fighting the Daesh terror group announced that three of its personnel — two Americans and one Briton — had been killed in a rocket attack on Iraq’s Taji military camp, located some 30 kilometers (18.6 miles) north of Baghdad.
On Saturday, a second similar rocket attack on Taji wounded three US troops. The Iraqi military said several Iraqi air defense servicemen were also critically wounded.
A new group calling itself Assaba al-Thaerin claimed responsibility for the attack on Taji.