A rocket launched into the green zone landed near a house, according to the Iraqi army. (Representative)
Baghdad:
A pair of rocket attacks targeted American diplomatic and military installations overnight, Iraqi security forces said on Sunday just over a week since unprecedented arrests prevented a similar attack.
Since October, American diplomats and troops across Iraq have been the target of about three dozen missile attacks that Washington blamed on pro-Iranian armed factions.
In the first such movement, elite Iraqi troops arrested over a dozen Tehran-backed fighters in late June who were planning a new attack on the Baghdad Green Zone, home to the United States and other embassies foreign.
Iraqi government officials said the raid would serve as a “message” to deter future attacks, but early Sunday, militants made another attempt.
A rocket fired into the green zone landed near a house, injuring a child, according to the Iraqi army.
“At the same time, our forces successfully thwarted another attack and seized a Katyusha rocket and launcher that aimed at the Taji base north of Baghdad,” where the troops of the US-led coalition are based, he added.
The attempts came just hours after the U.S. embassy tested a new rocket defense system known as C-RAM, according to an Iraqi security source.
C-RAM, set up earlier this year at the embassy, searches for incoming projectiles and explodes into the air, targeting them with several thousand bullets per minute.
The Embassy made no immediate comments on whether the system was used against the rocket overnight.
(This story has not been edited by GalacticGaming staff and is automatically generated from a syndicated feed.)
