Repeated Violations’: Iraqi President condemns US air Strikes

Iraq on Friday condemned overnight US airstrikes with its military saying they killed six people and describing them as violation of sovereignty and a targeted aggression against the nation’s regular armed forces.

President Barham Salih said such “repeated violations” could cause Iraq to unravel into a failed state and revive the Islamic State of Iraq and Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS) group.

Iraq’s security problems will be solved by supporting its government, not turning it into a battlefield for a proxy war, Salih said, warning that ISIL might seize on any chaos.

The repeated violations the state is being subjected to are a dangerous and deliberate weakening of its abilities especially at a time when Iraq faces unprecedented challenges on political, economic, financial, security, and health fronts,” he said.

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Meanwhile, Iraq’s foreign minister summoned the ambassadors of the United States and United Kingdom over the deadly overnight air raids against Iraqi military positions.

“The foreign minister held an emergency meeting in which the ministry’s undersecretaries, advisors and official spokesman discussed the measures regarding the recent American aggression. He has ordered the summoning of the United States and British ambassadors to Baghdad,” a spokesman said in a statement.

It came after Iraq’s military said at least one civilian and five security personnel were killed in the US raids, which it denounced as a violation of sovereignty and a targeted aggression against Iraq’s armed forces.

The civilian killed in the overnight attack was a cook working at an airport under construction in Karbala, the military said in a statement. The death toll included three soldiers and two policemen, while four soldiers, two policemen, one civilian and five militiamen were wounded, it said.

Earlier, the Pentagon said the US conducted “defensive precision strikes” against the Iran-backed Kataib Hezbollah facilities across Iraq, in an attack that was in response to an earlier rocket barrage that killed two US troops and one British soldier.