Three attack drones were launched toward a base housing U.S. forces in Iraq as the Iranian regime carried out ballistic missile and UAV attacks on Israel, two American officials confirmed to the Associated Press on Saturday.
The drones heading for Al-Asad Airbase in Anbar province were intercepted, according to a U.S. military official and a second U.S. official, who both spoke anonymously because they were not authorized to brief the press.
No group claimed responsibility for the attack, according to the AP.
The leader of the Iraq-based Iranian-backed Shi’ite militia Kata’ib Hezbollah, Abu Hussein al-Hamidawi, threatened on Sunday to intervene in the Israel-Iran conflict.
Al-Hamidawi said the militia was closely monitoring the actions of Israel and the United States, and if Washington intervenes in the Jewish state’s war with Iran, it would attack American interests and bases in the Middle East “without hesitation.”
However, the terrorist leader in his statement claimed that the Islamic Republic does not need any help to deter Jerusalem and that it has the capabilities to “bury [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu’s nose in the dirt” and to “rein in the tyranny of this usurping entity.”
Kata’ib Hezbollah also urged the “closing of the embassy of the greatest evil,” a reference to the United States legation in Baghdad, and “expelling the American occupation forces from the country, as they pose the clearest and gravest threat to Iraq’s security and the stability of the region.”
The United States in 2009 designated Kata’ib Hezbollah (“The Battalions of the Party of God”), which is a separate and distinct organization from Lebanon’s Hezbollah, as a foreign terrorist group due to its incessant attacks on U.S. diplomatic and military personnel in Iraq and Syria.
