Iraq has summoned the US chargé d’affaires in Baghdad to deliver a formal memorandum of protest over the overnight airstrikes on dozens of sites used by anti-terror resistance groups in the country.
The Iraqi Foreign Ministry announced in a Saturday statement that it is going to call in David Burger “in protest at the US aggression which targeted Iraqi civilian and military sites” due to the absence of Ambassador Alina L. Romanowski, the official Iraqi News Agency (INA) reported.
The statement said Iraqi officials will deliver an official note of protest regarding the strikes against locations in the towns of Akashat and Al-Qa’im in the western province of Anbar.
The Iraqi government said at least 16 people were killed in the US strikes. It condemned the “new aggression against” Iraq’s sovereignty. Civilians were among the fatalities, and 25 people were wounded in the bombings that targeted both civilian and security areas, a government spokesperson said.
“This aggressive strike will put security in Iraq and the region on the brink of the abyss,” the Iraqi government said, and denied Washington’s claims of coordinating the attacks with Baghdad as “false” and “aimed at misleading international public opinion.”
The presence of the US-led military coalition in the region “has become a reason for threatening security and stability in Iraq and a justification for involving Iraq in regional and international conflicts,” a statement from Prime Minister Mohamed Shia al-Sudani’s office read.
Syrian official news agency SANA also reported several casualties after the attacks in the desert region and border areas with Iraq.
US Central Command (CENTCOM) said its military forces struck more than 85 targets in the two countries “with numerous aircraft to include long-range bombers flown from the United States.”
“The airstrikes employed more than 125 precision munitions,” it added in a statement.
US President Joe Biden said in a statement on Friday that the strikes were the first in a series of actions by Washington in response to a recent drone attack that killed a number of soldiers at a remote US base in Jordan.
“Our response began today,” Biden said. “It will continue at times and places of our choosing,” he stated.
Three US soldiers were killed and about 40 others injured in the assault on the military base known as Tower 22 near the Jordan-Syria border on Sunday.
The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella group of anti-terror fighters, claimed responsibility for the drone strike.
In retaliation for the latest flurry of US strikes in Iraq and Syria, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq announced it had conducted missile strikes against the Ain al-Asad Airbase, housing US occupation forces in the western Iraqi province of Anbar.
The group also said it had staged missile and drone strikes against the strategic al-Tanf military base in southeastern Syria near the border with Jordan and Iraq, as well as the al-Khadra Village in Syria’s northeastern province of al-Hasakah.
