BAGHDAD – US forces in Iraq and Syria faced two separate rocket and explosive drone attacks in fewer than 24 hours, Iraqi security sources and US officials told Reuters on April 22. This was the first such report after a near three-month pause.

At least one armed drone was launched at the Ain al-Asad airbase that hosts US troops in the western Iraqi province of Anbar, a US official said.

That followed five rockets fired from northern Iraq towards US forces at a base in Rumalyn in remote north-eastern Syria, on April 21, according to US and Iraqi officials.

There were no reports of casualties or significant damage from the drone attacks.

On April 20, a massive explosion at a military base in Iraq killed a member of an Iraqi security force that includes Iran-backed groups.

The force commander said it was an attack while the army said it was investigating, and that there were no warplanes in the sky at the time. The US military denied involvement.

Near-daily rocket and drone strikes on US forces began in mid-October and were claimed by a group of Iran-backed Shi’ite Muslim armed groups known as the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, who cited US backing for Israel’s war in Gaza.

The attacks stopped in late January under pressure from the Iraqi authorities and Iran, following deadly US retaliatory airstrikes in Iraq, after three US soldiers were killed in a drone strike on a small base on the Iraqi-Jordanian border.

Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani returned at the weekend from a week-long visit to the US, where he met US President Joe Biden in an effort to turn a new page in US-Iraqi relations despite soaring regional tensions.

The US invaded Iraq in 2003 and toppled strongman leader Saddam Hussein, withdrawing in 2011 before returning in 2014 at the head of an international military coalition at the Baghdad government’s request to help fight Islamic State insurgents.

The US has some 2,500 troops in Iraq and 900 in eastern Syria on an advise-and-assist mission. REUTERS