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

Erbil, Iraq — Concerned about the drone attacks that 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 pro-Iranian militia group was blamed for the attack.

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

It is under siege nonetheless.

Missiles and drones have been striking the city and the surrounding area, as Iran uses armed proxy groups based inside Iraq to hit back wherever it can.

The sound of explosions and anti-missile systems has become increasingly routine in Erbil, a largely ethnic Kurdish city of more than one million.

While Iran claims its “harsh retaliatory strikes” are aimed at 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.

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

Thirty-six families were living in the adjacent Pope Francis Residential Complex at 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 facility.

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, as well as the bases of Kurdish peshmerga fighters.

“We’ve been hit every day by these drones from Mosul and Kirkuk,” said Omar Salimomar, an Ottawa resident stranded in Iraq. “It’s not easy.”

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

He said the Shia militias that have been firing on Erbil would be wise to heed the president’s caution that the attacks had to stop.

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

The local economy is also suffering as a result of the Iran war, which has forced the airport to close, a regional cabinet minister said in an interview.

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

“It’s very important for the economy of Kurdistan region. It’s the main way we get our electronics, medicine, and the closing of the airport is affecting a lot of businesses.”

Things could get much worse.

Iraq’s semi-autonomous north is controlled by ethnic Kurds, who despise Iran and accuse the Sunni-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 control the militia groups responsible.

“They are just 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 same time, he said the U.S. had been bombing nearby pro-Iran militias, putting Kurdistan in the unique position of being under attack from both sides in the Iran war.

“Now Iraq is very vulnerable, maybe one of the most vulnerable countries because of this conflict,” said the minister, who represents Christians in the government.

The number of casualties remains small, but growing.

On Monday, Nazim Hamad Kanabi lay in a hospital bed in Erbil, recovering from surgery to patch the wounds 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 was inside the hospital.”

The drone landed three to four metres away, spraying him with shrapnel, he said. Both his legs were bandaged, as well as his right arm, shoulder and chest.

Across the city, 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 six months, he said. He doesn’t know the details of what happened.

“The only thing we know is that he was on duty and the drone fell close to 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 because it was too weak to confront the U.S. and Israel directly.

“My son, he was a very kind and good person, and he was always seeking peace. But unfortunately, because of the black regime of Iran, he’s been killed,” Tahir said.

“This isn’t our war, but it has been put on our shoulders.”

Stewart.Bell@globalnews.ca