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Rockets were launched at the US Embassy in Baghdad for the second night in a row

Ellen Cranley,Ellen Cranley   

Rockets were launched at the US Embassy in Baghdad for the second night in a row
Politics2 min read
us embassy
  • Multiple rockets landed near the US Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq Sunday evening, marking the second such attack in the last day.
  • Police told multiple outlets that six people were wounded as three rockets landed in the city's heavily secured Green Zone and three others nearby.
  • US entities in the country have been increasingly under fire in recent weeks, and the killing of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, a top Iranian military official, by US forces triggered fiery responses from Iraq and Iran.
  • Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Multiple rockets landed near the US Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq on Sunday, according to numerous reports.

Of six rockets that fell in Baghdad, three struck the city's heavily secured Green Zone and three in a nearby area, Al Jazeera reported.

Police told the outlet that at least six people had been wounded in the attacks, which employed Katyusha rockets.

It was the second such attack in the last few days after two rockets previously landed in the Green Zone, which contains the country's parliament, government offices, and foreign embassies, on Saturday.

The strike comes at a tense time in US-Iraqi relations and is the latest of 14 times in the last two months that US entities in the country have been targeted.

The Daily Mail reported that Sunday's strike came after violent pro-Iran faction Kataeb Hezbollah warned Iraqi security forces to get away from US troops at bases across the country by 5 p.m. local time.

Last week, US authorities condemned attacks like a violent siege at the embassy and a December 27 rocket attack that killed an America military contractor near Kirkuk, Iraq. The White House connected both attacks to Gen. Qassem Soleimani, a top Iranian military official, before he was killed under orders from President Donald Trump.

The US shocked the region when a successful airstrike killed Soleimani at the Baghdad airport on January 3, triggering fiery responses from Iraq and Iran that appeared to be an escalation in tensions with the US.

American lawmakers and officials bat down concerns over security threats to the US in the wake of the attack after Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said that a "harsh retaliation is waiting" for Americans in the wake of Soleimani's killing.

Read more:

Troops in Iraq have been reassigned from fighting ISIS to protecting US assets amid Iran conflict

The United States' main allies are abandoning Trump over his 'dangerous escalation' with Iran

Trump just had a top Iranian general killed, and it's triggering an intense debate over whether the strike is legally justified

This map shows where US-Iran tensions have flared in Iraq, which culminated in the strike killing Iranian Gen. Qassem Soleimani


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