US soldiers injured in rocket attack on western Iraq base | News

Al Jazeera's correspondent said that the US Department of Defense (Pentagon) announced that a number of American soldiers were injured in a missile attack on Monday night on a base housing American forces in western Iraq, noting that the Pentagon is working “to assess the damage following the attack.”

For its part, Reuters quoted security officials as saying that two Katyusha rockets were fired on Monday at the Ain al-Assad air base in western Iraq, which houses American and international forces.

The sources added that it was not yet clear whether the attack had caused any casualties or damage inside the base. A security source also said that the missiles fell inside the base located in Anbar province, western Iraq.

The attack comes at a time when expectations are rising that Iran will launch strikes against Israel in the coming hours in response to the assassination of the head of the political bureau of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas), Ismail Haniyeh, a few days ago in Tehran.

Iraqi armed factions allied with Iran have targeted bases hosting American forces in Iraq and Syria dozens of times since the start of the Israeli aggression on the Gaza Strip on October 7.

The United States has about 2,500 troops in Iraq and another 900 in Syria, as part of the international coalition it formed in 2014 to fight the Islamic State.