BAGHDAD - The government of Iraq on Tuesday condemned overnight US air strikes on Iraqi military positions that it said killed one serviceman and wounded 18 other people, calling them a “clear hostile act”.
Washington said it carried out retaliatory air strikes after a one-way drone attack earlier in the day by Iran-aligned militants that left one US service member in critical condition and wounded two others.
A spokesman for the Baghdad government condemned the US strikes as “an unacceptable violation of Iraqi sovereignty”. It also stressed that attacks by armed groups against military bases hosting US-led coalition advisers are hostile acts and violate Iraqi sovereignty.
Two Iraqi security sources said the US airstrikes targeted headquarters for the Iraqi armed group Kataib Hezbollah in the city of Hilla south of Baghdad.
One fighter from Kataib Hezbollah was killed in the strikes and 16 were wounded, said two security sources on condition of anonymity.
The United States has 900 troops in Syria and 2,500 in Iraq on a mission it says aims to advise and assist local forces trying to prevent a resurgence of Islamic State, which in 2014 seized large swathes of both countries before being defeated.
The latest incidents underscore the risk of the Israel-Hamas war widening into a broader conflagration. Iran said an Israeli air strike in Damascus on Monday killed a senior commander of its Revolutionary Guard. Meanwhile, the US has assembled a coalition of militaries willing to help protect Red Sea shipping lanes after a number of vessels came under attack by Iran-backed Houthi rebels based in Yemen.
Iran backs Hamas and other regional groups. It has denied that it is helping militants to attack commercial ships.
Kataib Hezbollah is an Iraqi insurgent group backed by Iran that has been designated as a terrorist organisation by the US since 2009, according to the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University. The group, also known as the Hezbollah Brigades, took responsibility for the attack on US troops, the White House said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has pushed back on international criticism of the continuing war in Gaza, saying peace will only be possible when Hamas, which killed 1,200 people when it attacked Israel on Oct 7, is destroyed. The Hamas-run health ministry in Gaza says Israeli attacks have since killed more than 20,000 people.