BAGHDAD (Reuters) – Iraq’s government condemned on Tuesday overnight U.S. air strikes on Iraqi military positions that it said killed one serviceman and wounded 18 other people, calling them a “clear hostile act”.
The United States has carried out retaliatory air strikes on Monday in Iraq after a one-way drone attack earlier in the day by Iran-aligned militants that left one U.S. service member in critical condition and wounded two others.
The government condemned the U.S. strikes as “an unacceptable violation of Iraqi sovereignty,” while stressing that attacks by armed groups against military bases hosting U.S-led coalition advisers are hostile acts and violate Iraqi sovereignty, a government statement said.
Two Iraqi security sources said overnight U.S. airstrikes targeted headquarters for Iraqi armed group Kataib Hezbollah in the Iraqi 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 swaths of both countries before being defeated.
(Reporting by Ahmed Elimaml and Ahmed Rasheed, Editing by Angus MacSwan)
