Iraq desires to stay out of Iran war, but drone strikes are dragging it in – National

Erbil, Iraq — Concerned concerning the drone attacks which have targeted this northern Iraq city, Abdullah Mahmoud Tahir phoned his son on Saturday night.

“He said, ‘No worries, father, I’ll be OK,’” he recalled.

But 90 minutes later a drone killed his son, Walat, as he was guarding the shuttered Erbil airport. A professional-Iranian militia group was blamed for the attack.

The capital of Iraq’s northern Kurdistan region, Erbil is just not officially involved within the war the US and Israel are waging in neighbouring Iran.

It’s under siege nonetheless.

Missiles and drones have been striking town and the encircling area, as Iran uses armed proxy groups based inside Iraq to hit back wherever it might probably.

The sound of explosions and anti-missile systems has turn into increasingly routine in Erbil, a largely ethnic Kurdish city of multiple million.

While Iran claims its “harsh retaliatory strikes” are geared toward U.S. military assets and Israel, civilian residential buildings and even a monastery have been hit.

On Tuesday, the United Arab Emirates denounced an “unprovoked terrorist drone attack” on its Erbil consulate overnight.

“That is against human principles,” said Jamil Bassam, who was working at an Erbil church when a drone hit the constructing on the evening of March 4.

Thirty-six families were living within the adjoining Pope Francis Residential Complex on the time. Most left and are too frightened to return, Bassam said.

The church is near the international airport, which also houses a U.S. air base. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq has claimed responsibility for attacking the power.

It said it was doing so to avenge the killings of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Lebanese terror group Hezbollah.

Following the fatal airport drone strike, the president of the Kurdistan Regional Government, Masoud Barzani, warned that his patience was wearing thin.

He accused pro-Iranian groups of attacking “civilian areas and the economic infrastructure” of Kurdistan, in addition to the bases of Kurdish peshmerga fighters.

“We’ve been hit each day by these drones from Mosul and Kirkuk,” said Omar Salimomar, an Ottawa resident stranded in Iraq. “It’s hard.”

The Canadian said he was born in Erbil and flew in two weeks ago for a vacation but was unable to go away once the war began and the airport closed.

He said the Shia militias which have been firing on Erbil could be sensible to heed the president’s caution that the attacks needed to stop.

“Hopefully, they got the message but the issue is these militias, they don’t care,” he said. “I’m nervous, my family in Canada, my wife, my son, they’re nervous.”

The local economy can also be suffering because of this of the Iran war, which has forced the airport to shut, a regional cabinet minister said in an interview.

“It’s an enormous loss,” said Ano Jawhar Abdoka, the Kurdistan Regional Government’s Minister of Transportation and Communications.

“It’s very vital for the economy of Kurdistan region. It’s the fundamental way we get our electronics, medicine, and the closing of the airport is affecting numerous businesses.”

Things could get much worse.

Iraq’s semi-autonomous north is controlled by ethnic Kurds, who despise Iran and accuse the Shia-majority south of supporting Tehran and its proxy militias.

The minister called drone attacks on the airport “an act of terror” and said the Iraqi government needed to regulate the militia groups responsible.

“They are only tools of spreading terror and fear between our people,” he said. “We cannot remain, as Iraqis, under the mercy of proxy, uncontrolled, semi-terrorist militias.”

At the identical time, he said the U.S. had been bombing nearby pro-Iran militias, putting Kurdistan within the unique position of being under attack from each side within the Iran war.

“Now Iraq could be very vulnerable, possibly one of the vulnerable countries for this reason conflict,” said the minister, who represents Christians in the federal government.

The variety of casualties stays small, but growing.

On Monday, Nazim Hamad Kanabi lay in a hospital bed in Erbil, recovering from surgery to patch the injuries he suffered in a weekend drone barrage.

He said he was guarding the airport when “suddenly I felt something was dropping down from the sky. I woke up and I used to be contained in the hospital.”

The drone landed three to 4 metres away, spraying him with shrapnel, he said. Each his legs were bandaged, in addition to his right arm, shoulder and chest.

Across town, Abdullah Mahmoud Tahir, dressed all in black, was greeting family and friends arriving to mourn the death of his son.

Walat was 31, into bodybuilding and had two sons aged five years and 6 months, he said. He doesn’t know the main points of what happened.

“The one thing we all know is that he was on duty and the drone fell near his position,” he said as his older grandson played on the patch of lawn behind him.

He called the Iranian regime “fascist” and accused it of lashing out at its neighbours since it was too weak to confront the U.S. and Israel directly.

“My son, he was a really kind and good person, and he was all the time looking for peace. But unfortunately, due to the black regime of Iran, he’s been killed,” Tahir said.

“This isn’t our war, nevertheless it has been placed on our shoulders.”

Stewart.Bell@globalnews.ca