US air defenses shoot down drones near Iraq air base
Drones were intercepted and brought down near the air base that hosts US forces.
US air defense systems shot down two drones near Ayn al-Asad air base shortly after midnight on Sunday, Iraq’s military said.
The encroachment, knocked down by US counter-rocket, artillery and mortar systems (C-RAM), is the latest targeting the base that houses Western military contractors and has been home to US Reaper drones used largely in operations against the Islamic State (IS).
No group has claimed credit for the incident, which follows a previous drone attack on Ayn al-Asad on May 8. US and international coalition sites have increasingly come under attack from unmanned aircraft in Iraq in recent months, a problem that has raised significant concern for US military officials.
Earlier this year, a fixed-wing drone carrying explosives struck and damaged a CIA storage facility at an air base in Erbil, in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan Region, alarming officials in Washington about how the identity of the site may have leaked, according to The Washington Post.
