Bomb explosions target terrorist US-led coalition military convoys in south Iraq, near capital

Separate roadside bomb attacks have struck two convoys of trucks carrying logistical equipment belonging to the US-led military coalition in Iraq’s southern province of Muthanna near the border with Kuwait, and south of capital Baghdad.

A security source, speaking on condition of anonymity, told Arabic-language Shafaq news agency on Thursday that the first attack took place on a highway near the provincial capital city of Samawah.

The source added that the explosion caused no casualties, but only some material damage.

The second attack took place later on in the Latifiya region on the outskirts of capital, Baghdad, another security source was quoted by AFP as saying, causing only material damage without any casualties.

They are the latest in a string of such incidents in recent weeks. On Wednesday evening, another convoy carrying supplies to coalition forces was attacked in the city of Mahmoudiyah in Baghdad province. The blast left no casualties and just damaged vehicles.

Anti-US sentiment has been running high in Iraq since the assassination of top Iranian anti-terror commander Lieutenant General Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), and his Iraqi trenchmate Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, the deputy head of the Popular Mobilization Units, along with their companions in a US terror drone strike authorized by President Donald Trump near Baghdad International Airport on January 3.

Iraqi lawmakers approved a bill two days later, demanding the withdrawal of all foreign military forces led by the United States from the country.

Karim Alaiwi, a legislator from the Fatah (Conquest) alliance and a member of the Security and Defense Committee in the Iraqi legislature, told Arabic-language Baghdad Today news website on November 19 that his parliamentary coalition and all other national factions seek complete pullout of all foreign forces, not just Americans, from the Iraqi soil.

Alaiwi described the Pentagon’s decision to reduce the number of US forces in Iraq as “unacceptable,” emphasizing that the Iraqi parliament’s resolution concerning withdrawal of US troops from the entire Iraqi territories, including the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region, is unambiguous and irreversible.