Two Americans and a Briton are killed in rocket attack by Iran-backed fighters on base in Iraq – Daily Mail, Dailymail.co.uk

Two American troops and a Briton are killed in rocket attack by Iran-backed fighters on military base in Iraq

• Two American troops and one British personnel were killed in Iraq Wednesday
• There are at least three confirmed deaths and ten people injured in the attack on Taji military camp
• (small rockets hit the base around 7.) (pm in Iraq)
• Iran backed militia are believed responsible .
• Camp Taji has been used as a training base for a number of years

There are currently about 6, 04 US troops in Iraq By

Frances Mulraney

and (Wires

:

: (EDT, (March)

: : (EDT) (March)

Two American troops and one from Britain were killed, and about a dozen people were wounded when (small rockets hit Iraq

‘s Taji military camp north of Baghdad on Wednesday, said US officials.

The number of U.S. troops injured has not been confirmed.

The officials said it was too early to assign blame, but any indication that Iran – backed militia were responsible could ignite a new round of military escalation between the United States and Iran.

the officials, speaking on condition of anonymity , declined to quantify the number of troops and military contractors among the dead and wounded and noted that the information was just coming in and could change.

Initial battlefield reports often contain inaccuracies. US soldiers walk around at the Taji base complex in Iraq which hosts Iraqi and US troops. Two American troops were killed in a rocket attack on the base at around 7. (PM Wednesday ) Operation Inherent Resolve spokesperson Army Colonel Myles Caggins shared these pictures on Twitter when confirming Wednesday’s rocket attack which killed two Americans

Army Colonel Myles Caggins, the Operation Inherent Resolve spokesperson Retweeted these images of rocket launchers on Wednesday when confirming the attack on Taji base in Iraq

Army Colonel Myles Caggins, a US military spokesman in Iraq, said on Twitter that more than small rockets hit Iraqi camp Taji base at around 7. pm in Iraq on Ma rch 14.

Earlier on Wednesday, the Iraqi military said no casualties had been reported in the attack.

Camp Taji, located just north of Baghdad, has been used as a training base for a number of years.

There are as many as 6, 04 US forces in Iraq, training and advising Iraqi forces and conducting counter-terror missions.

Iran-backed paramilitary groups have regularly been rocketing and shelling bases in Iraq that host US forces and the area around the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad. Army Colonel Myles Caggins shared these images when confirming the attack Wednesday

The attack is said to have involved small rockets striking Taji Base in Iraq. Army Colonel Myles Caggins, a US military spokesman in Iraq, shared these images after the attack

Officials did not say what group they believe launched the rocket attack Wednesday, but Kataib Hezbollah or another Iranian-backed Shia militia group is likely.

The Kataib Hezbollah militia was blamed for an attack on a base last year which killed an American contractor, which led to retaliatory US strikes against it in Iraq and Syria.

On January 3, 14 Iranian ballistic missiles struck the al-Asad air base in Iraq after the United States killed top Iranian generals Qassem Soleimani and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis.

The Iranian attack led to more than (American service members being diagnosed with mild traumatic brain injuries.

Kataib Hezbollah has been designated as a ‘foreign terrorist organization’ by the State Department since .

The assessment and investigation into Wednesday’s attack is ongoing. It was the largeast attack on a U.S. base in Iraq since January.

The attack came two days after enemy forces killed two U.S. service members while accompanying Iraqi forces in northern Iraq.

The deaths of both soldiers prompted the military’s top brass to order a review of how their forces conduct missions in Iraq and Syria following the deaths of the special operations service members.

The soldiers were killed by ‘enemy forces’ on a mission to knock out the stronghold Sunday in the mountains of north-central Iraq , according to a statement posted online by the Combined Joint Task Force, which commands Operation Inherent Resolve.

The unnamed soldiers who were killed had been part of a Marine Special Operations team that was working with Iraqi counterterrorism forces, reports the

New York Times .

They had gotten in a fierce gun battle while clearing a well-defended cave complex in mountains near the town of Makhmur, which is about 85 miles southwest of Erbil, the Times reports.

Former US special envoy Brett McGurk tweeted criticism over the length of time that it took to reclaim the dead who had to be pulled out with a hoist after falling into a crevice