A large-scale explosion rocked an Iraqi military base about 50 kilometers south of Baghdad overnight, foreign news agencies reported. The Iraqi military said one person was killed and eight others were wounded. She also added that she did not see a drone or a fighter jet in the vicinity of the base at the time of the explosion. According to some speculation in the press, it could have been an airstrike at a time of heightened tensions between Israel and Iran. The military base that was rocked by the explosion is also used by pro-Iranian groups.
The United States said its troops did not carry out any strikes in Iraq today. Israel has not commented on the incident, and the Palestinian Hamas movement condemned the attack as a violation of Iraqi sovereignty, Al Jazeera reported.
The Kalsu military base south of Baghdad is used by the so-called Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), which unite several dozen militant groups, mostly pro-Iranian, and are formally part of the Iraqi army. But some of these groups act largely independently. Some factions of the PMF participated in rocket and drone attacks on US forces in Iraq during Israel’s current war in the Gaza Strip, but stopped these attacks in February.
According to PMF, the night explosion caused material damage and injuries. They added that they are investigating the explosions.
“The United States did not conduct airstrikes in Iraq today,” wrote the regional command of the US armed forces CENTCOM on the X network in the morning.
A nighttime explosion at an Iraqi military base they took place a day after an explosion at an airbase in Iran near the city of Isfahan, which some sources attributed to Israel on Friday, resulted in no casualties. Neither Israel nor Iran have officially commented on it. From this, some conclude that the two arch-enemies are trying to calm the tension in the region, which was exacerbated by Tehran’s large-scale attack on Israel a week ago. He too escaped without casualties and Iran says it was in retaliation for the killing of 16 people, including Iranian officers, at its consulate in Damascus on April 1 in an airstrike, which is attributed to Israel.
Hamas, of which Iran is an ally, today strongly condemned the explosions at the military base in Iraq and called them a violation of Iraqi sovereignty. In the same statement, he also said that the US government is “responsible for the escalation in the region” because it “supports the Nazi war of extermination against the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip.” The war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip was caused by a terrorist attack by Hamas on southern Israel on October 7 last year.
