ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — A “new” and “serious” threat is being posed to the security of the Kurdistan Region, the Peshmerga ministry’s chief of staff told Rudaw a day after a drone attack on Erbil International Airport.
“According to information from the Peshmerga ministry’s intelligence agencies that there is a continuing threat to the [Kurdistan] Region, a threat besides Daesh (Arabic acronym for the Islamic State, ISIS),” Jabar Yawar told Rudaw’s Sangar Abdulrahman on Thursday.
“There’s a new threat that is serious, the threat of the groups that are not under the command of Iraqi forces and have breached the law.”
Yawar’s comments came the day after a drone attack targeting a US-led Coalition forces base in Erbil International Airport. The Coalition told Rudaw that no injuries were reported.
Erbil’s airport was last attacked on February 15. Two civilians died as a result of the rocket attack, one of them a foreign contractor. Thirteen people were injured, several of them Coalition personnel.
A few weeks after the attack, the Kurdistan Region’s counter-terrorism unit published a video confession of one of the four alleged perpetrators. He said the attack was carried out in coordination with Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada, a militia group part of the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF, or Hashd al-Shaabi).
Rockets were also launched toward the airport in late September last year, the interior ministry said it was launched between Sheikh Amir and Tarjla villages in Bartella.
The groups are also posing a threat to Baghdad, Yawar said.
“They have now become a big problem not only for the Kurdistan Region, but they’re also a threat and problem for Iraq’s security and have created a headache for Mr. Kadhimi … who has not yet put them under his command nor control them or end them,” he said.
On the same day as the attack on Erbil’s airport, three rockets were fired at a military base in Bashiqa, two of which landed inside the base. One Turkish soldier was killed and two civilians, including a twelve-year-old girl, were injured in the attack.
The frequent rocket attacks on foreign military and diplomatic sites in Iraq are widely blamed on pro-Iran militias.
The US Director of National Intelligence's office expressed concern over rocket attacks in an Annual Threat Assessment report released on April 9.
“Iranian-backed Shia militias are likely to continue attacks against US targets, such as the February rocket attack on Erbil International Airport, to press US forces to leave if the Iraqi Government does not reach an agreement with Washington on a timetable for withdrawal,” read the report.
Although the Iraqi government announced the territorial defeat of ISIS in December 2017, remnants of the group have returned to earlier insurgency tactics. The group is most active in territory disputed between Erbil and Baghdad, notably in the northern provinces of Salahaddin, Diyala, and Kirkuk.
In the latest edition of its weekly al-Naba newsletter, ISIS claimed to have killed and injured 7 people in Iraq between March 31 and April 6.
