The United States and Saudi Arabia carried out overnight air strikes in eastern Iraq against Iran-aligned militants, in a further escalation of the widening conflict in the Middle East.
In a post on X, the US military’s Central Command, or Centcom, said the strikes were launched during the night from Tuesday to Wednesday. It said the targets were "terrorists aligned with Iran" who had been ordered by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards to attack US forces and Saudi energy infrastructure.
Centcom said US and Saudi warplanes hit several logistics and weapons sites in eastern Iraq.
Saudi Arabia’s defence ministry confirmed the operation shortly afterwards, saying it had targeted "terrorist militias loyal to Iran" linked to recent attacks on the kingdom’s oil facilities.
At least 10 members of the former pro-Iranian Iraqi paramilitary coalition Hashd al-Shaabi were killed overnight from Tuesday to Wednesday in US and Saudi air strikes, according to two sources within the group.
Riyadh had accused Iran-backed armed groups on Monday and Tuesday of launching drones towards Saudi territory. Just hours before the strikes, the Saudi defence ministry said air defences had intercepted and destroyed several drones that were attempting to hit oil installations.
The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella group for pro-Iran armed factions, denied carrying out any attack on Saudi Arabia. Baghdad said it had opened an investigation after Saudi Arabia urged it to prevent its territory being used to launch operations against the kingdom.
Iraq is caught between Saudi Arabia and Iran, two rival regional powers. Since the outbreak of the current war in the Middle East, Iraqi Kurdistan in the north-east has come under attack from Tehran and Iraqi armed groups allied with the Islamic Republic.
The autonomous region hosts exiled Iranian Kurdish rebels. In recent weeks, the regional capital Erbil and the city of Sulaymaniyah, where the United States has diplomatic missions, have both been targeted.
Centcom said the US-Saudi strikes were a response to more than 30 drone attacks directed by the Revolutionary Guards over the previous 72 hours. It also said US facilities in Iraq had faced more than 600 attempted attacks by the same Iranian-linked militias between February and April.
The latest strikes mark another step in a regional conflict that the original report says began on 28 February with an Israeli-American offensive in Iran and has since spread to other Gulf states hosting US interests.
A ceasefire between the United States and Iran that took effect on 17 June collapsed in early July.
After a new wave of attacks, both sides had observed a four-night lull in fighting, while Donald Trump said he wanted to give diplomacy another chance.
