U.S. forces in Iraq stopped the second armed drone attack in two days targeting an air base west of Baghdad.
“Two explosive-laden drones were shot down on Tuesday by Iraq’s air defenses as they approached the Ain al-Asad air base, which hosts U.S. forces, west of Baghdad, an official of the U.S.-led international military coalition said,” Reuters reported.
January 3 marked the two-year anniversary of the assassination of Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) Quds Force Commander Qasem Soleimani by a U.S. drone strike at the Baghdad airport ordered by then-President Donald Trump. The strikes are believed to be associated with the anniversary of the assassination.
The attack marked the second consecutive day of armed drone strikes targeting the area.
Two armed drones were also shot down on Monday as they approached a military base housing U.S. forces near Baghdad’s international airport, according to Reuters.
“[A]n official of the U.S.-led international military coalition said the base’s defence system had engaged ‘two fixed-wing suicide drones. They were shot down without incident,’” the report stated.
“This was a dangerous attack on a civilian airport,” the coalition official also said, according to Reuters.
As The Daily Wire reported on Monday:
No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack. Footage from the debris revealed that one of the drones had the words “Soleimani’s revenge” written on the wing in Arabic.
France 24 added, “Two fixed-wing suicide drones, or improvised cruise missiles, attempted to attack Baghdad Airport this morning at approximately 4:30 am” (0130 GMT), the official told AFP.”
The report also said that a C-RAM system took down the threat “without incident.”
“A counter-rocket, artillery and mortar, or C-RAM, system ‘at the Baghdad Diplomatic Support Center engaged them and they were shot down without incident,’ added the source, speaking on condition of anonymity,” the report said.
As The Daily Wire reported in 2020, U.S. military forces reportedly killed two top Iranian military commanders involved in terrorism in Iraq in an airstrike in what analysts said was a significantly bigger deal than the killing of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi:
Iranian Major-General Qasem Soleimani, head of the Quds Force, and Iraqi militia commander Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis were the two Iranian military leaders who were killed. Al-Muhandis was in charge of the Iranian-linked Popular Mobilization Forces.
BBC reporter Ali Hashem reported: “My sources suggesting that commander of IRGC Quds force Qassem Suleimani and Deputy chief of PMU Abu Mahdi AlMuhandes were in the convoy hit by the U.S. airstrike near Baghdad airport Iraq.”
The first drone attack on Monday also occurred on the same day that Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi spoke about Soleimani’s death. Raisi claimed Trump must be put on trial for the general’s death.
“If Trump and (former secretary of state Mike) Pompeo are not tried in a fair court for the criminal act of assassinating General Soleimani, Muslims will take our martyr’s revenge,” Raisi said in the speech, according to Reuters.
“The aggressor, murderer and main culprit – the then president of the United States – must be tried and judged under the (Islamic) law of retribution, and God’s ruling must be carried out against him,” he added.