May 11. /TASS/. US servicemen opened fire on residential buildings during military exercise in Iraq, Baghdad Today reported Tuesday citing authorities of the town of Basrma, Erbil Province.
According to the local authorities, US servicemen deployed at the Al-Harir Air Base, “accidentally fired several shots at houses in the town of Basrma during military exercise on countering drones,” which resulted in damage to 11 houses and a car.
According to different reports provided by the website, the missiles, fired by the Americans, hit residential buildings in the densely populated area of Basrma, which resulted in numerous injured civilians. Iraqi security services commenced an investigation.
The Al-Harir Air Base is located 70 kilometers northeast of Erbil and 115 kilometers away from Iranian border. It was actively used by US Forces against the deposed president Saddam Hussein during the war in Iraq between 2003 and 2011. The city of Erbil is the capital of Iraq’s Kurdistan Region.
U.S. Troops ‘Mistakenly’ Open Fire on Iraqi Kurdish Neighborhood, writes Breitbart.
U.S. military forces stationed at Al-Harir Air Base in northern Iraq’s Kurdistan Region “mistakenly” fired on at least 11 civilian homes and one civilian car on Monday night in the nearby town of Shaqlawa, the Kurdish news website Rudaw reported.
“At 10:00 PM [on May 9], the [U.S.] force was conducting practice specialized for shooting down drones, and that is why the bullets landed in the center of Basrma district and the security forces arrived at the scene of the incident,” Jangawar Azhgayi, the director of Shaqlawa’s Basrma district, told Rudaw.
Rudaw’s English news service reported on May 10 that it had “repeatedly reached out to Operation Inherent Resolve’s press desk and the US Department of Defense for comment on the [May 9 Shaqlawa] incident, but as yet has had no response.”
“Despite Rudaw English submitting a question, [U.S.] Pentagon Press Secretary John F. Kirby did not address the event during his Tuesday [May 10] briefing at the Pentagon,” the news outlet noted.
Rudaw on May 10 shared two photos via its Twitter account appearing to show Shaqlawa civilian structures shot through with bullet holes on May 9.
Iran’s state-run Mehr News Agency reported on the incident on May 10, writing, “Arab media reported on Monday night [May 9] that heavy gunfire was heard at al-Harir Airport in Erbil province in northern Iraq.”
The U.S. military plans to maintain a presence of its troops in Iraq and Syria despite a general winding down of its official operations in the neighboring countries to counter ISIS (from about 2014 to 2021) because the international jihadist group “continued to constitute a security threat” in the nations “despite no longer holding territory in Iraq and Syria,” Rudaw paraphrased the U.S. Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East, Dana Stroul, as saying on April 6.