Rocket lands near Baghdad airport, no casualties

Baghdad, June 23 (IANS) A Katyusha rocket landed near the Baghdad International Airport without causing casualty, the Iraqi military said.

The attack took place on Monday evening when unknown militants fired the rocket from a village in Abu Ghraib area in western Baghdad, the media office of the Iraqi Joint Operations Command (JOC) said in a statement.

Baghdad airport and other Iraqi military bases housing the US forces have been frequently targeted by mortar and rocket attacks, reports Xinhua news agency.

The attack came more than a week after the US and Iraqi officials held a strategic video dialogue, where Washington pledged to continue cutting down on its forces in Iraq and confirmed that it does not seek permanent military presence in the country.

The Iraq-US relations have witnessed a tension since January 3 when an American drone struck a convoy at Baghdad’s airport, which killed Qasem Soleimani, former commander of the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps, and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy chief of Iraq’s paramilitary Hashd Shaabi forces.

The US airstrike prompted the Iraqi parliament two days later to pass a resolution that requires the government to end the presence of foreign forces in the country.

More than 5,000 US troops have been deployed in Iraq to support the domestic forces in the battles against the Islamic State militants, mainly providing training and advising.

–IANS

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