PMU Targets “Eilat” Hours after Strike on Its Base

By Staff, Agencies

An explosion has hit an Iraqi military base housing the Popular Mobilizing Units [PMU].

The explosion on Friday night was at the Calso base is stationed, an interior ministry source and a military official said.

The ministry official said the attack killed one person and wounded eight others, while the military source said three Iraqi military personnel were wounded, according to AFP.

The Reuters news agency said two officials blamed the explosion on an airstrike but could not say who was responsible.

In a statement, Hashd al-Sha’abi or the PMU said the attack had inflicted “material losses” and casualties, without specifying the number of wounded people. The organization said an “explosion” had hit its premises.

“The explosion hit equipment, weapons and vehicles,” said the ministry source.

The security sources would not identify who was responsible for the attack or say whether it had been a drone strike. There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack.

On social media, the US military said its forces were not behind the reported strike. “The United States has not conducted air strikes in Iraq today,” US Central Command [Centcom] posted on Twitter/X, adding that reports that American forces had carried out a strike were “not true”.

Meanwhile, the fighters from the Iraqi anti-terror resistance groups have launched a drone strike against a strategic target in the southernmost part of the 1948 “Israeli”-occupied territories in response to the attack on the PMU’s military base.

The Islamic Resistance in Iraq in a statement published on its Telegram channel, claimed responsibility for the attack on the “vital” site in the port of iraqEilat, which lies at the northern tip of the Red Sea, on Saturday morning.

It said the drone strike was carried out in continuation of the second phase of the struggle against the occupying “Israeli” entity, in support of Palestinians in Gaza, and in retaliation for the massacres that the usurping Zionist entity is perpetrating against ordinary people in the besieged territory.

The group noted that the strike also came in reprisal for grave violation of Iraqi sovereignty and in response to the aggression on Hashd al-Sha’abi camps.