Rockets strike Iraq’s Besmayah base hosting foreign troops – military

A pair of rockets hit a military base in Iraq overnight, the country’s military said without mentioning any casualties. The Besmayah Range in central Iraq hosts a Spanish contingent.

This appears to be the latest in a series of harassing rocket attacks against sites in Iraq where NATO troops are stationed. One last week resulted in the deaths of two US troops and a British military medic at Camp Taji, triggering retaliatory airstrikes against Iraq’s Shia militia forces.

The Besmayah base 45km southeast of Baghdad hosts around 350 of the 550 Spanish troops deployed in Iraq, with Camp Taji being the secondary base of Spanish operations.

The situation for foreign troops in Iraq escalated after the US assassination on Iraqi soil of a senior Iranian general and his Iraqi host. The national parliament voted to have NATO forces removed from the country, but the alliance doesn’t seem to have any intention to comply.

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