LONDON — The United States and Iraq were at odds Friday over the impact of airstrikes aimed at avenging the deaths of coalition soldiers this week, with a top U.S. general saying the munitions hit military targets while Iraq insisted that there were regular troops and a civilian among the dead.
The U.S. military said early Friday morning that it had launched “defensive precision strikes” against targets linked to the Kataib Hezbollah group, calling them a proportional response to a rocket attack which killed one British and two American service members Wednesday on an Iraqi military base north of Baghdad.
Marine Gen. Kenneth “Frank” McKenzie Jr., the chief of U.S. Central Command, said in a briefing at the Pentagon that strikes hit five facilities used by Kataib Hezbollah to store advanced conventional weapons. “The strikes, carried out by manned aircraft, all occurred south and west of Baghdad,” McKenzie said.
He showed before and after photographic imagery of sites in Jurf al-Sakhar, Karbala, Al Musayyib and Arab Nawar Ahmad, and said they showed that precise weapons were used to maximize damage but limit civilian harm.
“We assessed that each location stored weapons that would enable lethal operations against U.S. and coalition forces in Iraq,” the general said. “We also assessed that the destruction of these sites will degrade Kataib Hezbollah’s ability to conduct future strikes.” McKenzie said the U.S. military was “very comfortable with the level of damage that we were able to achieve,” at that those sites.
But in Iraq, the strikes were met with a flurry of condemnation, as leading military and political figures said that three soldiers and two policemen had been killed in the attacks, along with a civilian who was working in an airport that was under construction.
It was unclear if any militiamen had been killed.
The Iraqi military described the attacks as “treacherous,” saying three regular soldiers had been killed in the strikes, as well as two policemen whose bodies had yet to be recovered from the rubble. Iraq’s president, Barham Salih, described the strikes as a “violation of national sovereignty.”
Authorities in charge of the Karbala International Airport said that one of their facilities had also been hit and that a civilian working there had been killed. “The airport is purely civilian,” they said in a statement, calling local media to the scene to back up their assertion.
McKenzie, in response to a question, acknowledged that one of the strike sites was at a civilian airport. The facility has been under construction since 2017. Iraqi state television channels showed a dilapidated building with windows blown out. Peeling off above the door was blue lettering that read ‘Karbala International Airport’ and ‘Site Offices’.
U.S. officials are still assessing the target sites, he said, in part because bad weather has made it difficult to do so immediately. The locations were “clearly terrorist bases,” he added, and that if Iraqi military forces were there, “it’s probably not a good idea to position yourself with Kataib Hezbollah in the wake of a strike killed Americans and coalition members.”
The strikes risk intensifying already simmering tensions between the U.S.-led coalition and an array of political and armed forces who want western soldiers to leave Iraq. Kataib Hezbollah has threatened Iraqis working with the U.S.-led coalition and told them to distance themselves before March 15, or face attack.
Iran backs a handful of powerful militias in Iraq, including Kataib Hezbollah, and representatives of each group hold positions within the state apparatus.
The militias often help to enforce Tehran’s interests, attacking a protest movement that is critical of it, or the U.S. forces that Iran wants to expel. But experts say Iran’s overall control of these militias remains unclear. At the local level, for example, they also pursue their own strategic goals.
In the briefing Friday, McKenzie insisted that the Karbala airport site had been used to store weapons.
“The fact of the matter is, that was a very clear target,” he said. “It may have been on the airfield. I can’t tell you what else was in there, but I know it was being used for purposes of targeting us. That’s the reason we struck it.”
President Trump has made it clear that the death of American personnel in Iraq is a red line for his administration. The death of a U.S. contractor in a rocket attack late last year set in motion escalating tit-for-tat strikes that brought Washington and Tehran to the brink of war: Iran-backed militias besieged Baghdad’s U.S. Embassy as guards in the capital’s Green Zone stepped aside. Trump then ordered the killing of renowned Iranian military commander Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani on Iraqi soil, and Iran hit back with a wave of ballistic missiles that came close to killing U.S. soldiers and injured more than one hundred.
Tensions have ebbed since their peak in January, as has much of the immediate pressure for coalition troops to leave Iraq. But the potential for another round of escalation has never been far away. U.S. and European officials say Iran-backed militias have continued to launch rocket attacks on Iraqi military bases hosting coalition troops, or on the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad.
On Friday morning, the Pentagon also released the identities of the U.S. troops killed in the rocket attack on Camp Taji on Wednesday.
They were Army Spec. Juan Miguel Mendez Covarrubias, 27, of Hanford, Calif., and Air Force Staff Sgt. Marshal D. Roberts, 28, of Owasso, Okla. Mendez Covarrubias was a member of the 1st Cavalry Division’s 1st Air Cavalry Brigade at Fort Hood, Tex., while Roberts was a member of the Oklahoma Air National Guard’s 219th Engineering Installation Squadron.
The British government has identified their fatality at Camp Taji as Lance Cpl. Brodie Gillon, 26. She was a reservist and combat medical technician with the Scottish and North Irish Yeomanry and deployed with the Irish Guards Battle Group, the British Ministry of Defense said.
McKenzie said the Iraqi government knew the United States was planning strikes — something that was telegraphed publicly in Washington on Thursday in remarks from Defense Secretary Mark T. Esper and Army Gen. Mark A. Milley, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
Although there was no immediate response from Kataib Hezbollah on Friday, the Iraqi militia network of which it is a part — known as the Popular Mobilization Forces — said it was preparing an “important” statement.
Lamothe reported from Washington; Salim reported from Baghdad.
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2020-03-13 16:06:28Z
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