Iraq Says 16 Killed In U.S. Strikes, Calls Security Risk Grave

(Bloomberg) -- Iraq’s government said civilians were among at least 16 people killed in a wave of US airstrikes that the Middle Eastern country called a grave risk to security in the region.

Dozens of US strikes late Friday targeted Iranian forces and militias in Iraq and Syria and were taken in retaliation for a drone attack a week ago in northeast Jordan by an Iran-linked militant group in which three American soldiers were killed. The strikes also injured at least 25 and damaged residential building, Iraq said. 

“This aggressive strike will put security in Iraq and the region on the brink of an abyss,” Basim Al-Awadi, a spokesman for Iraq’s government, said in a statement issued on Saturday. 

“Iraq reiterates its refusal to let its lands be an arena for settling scores.” 

Separately, an Iranian foreign ministry spokesman called the US airstrikes a “strategic mistake,” without specifying whether the country’s assets were targeted, and Russia’s foreign ministry said it would ask the UN Security Council to discuss the strikes as soon as possible. 

The “adventurous move” by Washington “will have no outcome but escalating tension and instability in the region,” ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani said in a statement, adding that the strikes were “violations of the sovereignty and territorial integrity” of both Iraq and Syria. 

A number of civilians and soldiers were killed or wounded in eastern Syria, near the Iraqi border, the state-run SANA news service reported, citing a statement from the nation’s military. Significant damage was inflicted on public and private property, it added. 

Meeting in Brussels, European foreign affairs officials called for an urgent de-escalation, describing the Middle East as a boiler set to explode. 

Read more: How Iran-Backed Groups Provoke Wider Mideast Conflict: QuickTake

The region has edged closer to an all-out conflict since Hamas militants struck Israel on Oct. 7, killing some 1,200 people and taking hundreds of hostages, and Israel’s government declared war on the group, deemed a terrorist organization by the US and the European Union, in the Gaza Strip.

“Our common goal has to be to prevent a spillover,” Austrian Foreign Minister Alexander Schallenberg in Brussels. “This is a powder keg and there are too many people running around with matches.”  

In Friday’s incursion, aircraft including long-range B-1 bombers flown from the US struck 85 targets at seven locations linked to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps’ Quds Force and militant groups that Iran funds, according to US officials.  

Read more: US Hits Iran’s Militias in Syria, Iraq, Raising Escalation Fears

The US attacks came days before Secretary of State Antony Blinken is set to embark on a fifth trip to the region since the Hamas attacks on Israel. He’s expected to touch down in Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Qatar, Israel, and the West Bank over five days. 

Blinken’s visit is a bid to help secure a cease-fire and hostage deal in Gaza that officials believe could serve as a tentative step toward ending the conflict between Israel and Hamas.

While backing Israel’s right to defend itself after the October attack, US officials believe a cease-fire could deny Iranian proxies a reason to keep attacking American forces.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin said in a statement on Friday that President Joe Biden has directed more action against the IRGC and militias backed by the group, though he didn’t say when that would happen. 

US military bases scattered across Iraq and Syria had come under attack more than 160 times since Hamas’s October attack on Israel, but the Jan. 28 fatalities were the first deaths.

The US strikes targeted “logistics and munition supply chain facilities of militia groups and their IRGC sponsors who facilitated attacks against US and Coalition forces,” Central Command said. Briefing reporters afterward, US officials said the Iraqi government was informed beforehand.  

The US blamed the deadly attack in Jordan on an Iranian-backed umbrella group known as the Islamic Resistance in Iraq. That group is part of what’s known as the Axis of Resistance, a web of anti-Israel and anti-US militants in the region that encompasses groups in Syria, Lebanon and Yemen, as well as Hamas in the Gaza Strip. It also includes the Kata’ib Hezbollah militant group, which said earlier in the week that it was halting military operations in Iraq after pressure from the Iraqi government.

The US “is purposefully trying to plunge the largest countries in the region into conflict,” Russian foreign ministry’s spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said in a statement. “It’s obvious the airstrikes are specifically designed to further inflame.” 

Like the US, Iranian officials have sought to balance promises of retaliation against assurances that they don’t seek a wider conflict. Earlier in the week, an IRGC commander said the country wasn’t seeking a confrontation with the US but has “no fear of war.”

(Updates with Russian response from fifth paragraph.)

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