Iraq rocket attack kills contractor, injures U.S. service member

A civilian contractor was killed and five others were injured in a rocket attack on Monday at a US-run military base in northern Iraqi Kurdish that also left a US service member with a concussion , according to US officials.

The Erbil explosion was the deadliest attack to hit US-led forces in Iraq for almost a year.

The contractor who was killed was not an American, and of the injured civilians, four are from the United States and one is from Turkey.

“We are outraged by today’s rocket attack in the Iraqi Kurdistan region,” US Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement Monday evening. “We express our condolences to the relatives of the civilian contractor killed in this attack, as well as to the innocent Iraqi people and their families who are suffering from these ruthless acts of violence. I contacted the Prime Minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government, Masrour Barzani, to discuss the incident and to pledge our support for all efforts to investigate and hold those responsible to account.

Baghdad’s central government said it was forming a committee with the Kurdistan regional government to investigate the attack because it believes the rockets were launched from an area not under Kurdish control.

Kurdish security sources said at least three rockets landed near Erbil International Airport in the Autonomous Region late at night.

US troops occupy a military base adjacent to the civilian airport.

A statement from the Kurdish Interior Ministry said a number of rockets were fired at Erbil and its outskirts around 9:30 p.m. local time and that some people were injured, but provided no further details.

The latest deadly attack on the coalition killed a British and two Americans in March.