• Baghdad orders probe after drone targets Kurdistan president’s home
• US and Iraq to ‘intensify cooperation’ against attacks

BAGHDAD: A strike in northern Iraq’s Kirkuk on Saturday killed three fighters from the Popular Mobilisation Forces and wounded four others, the ex-paramilitary coalition said, blaming the US and Israel for the attack.

The fighters from the alliance — also known as the Hashed al-Shaabi, now part of Iraq’s regular armed forces — were “subjected to a treacherous Zionist-American” attack, according to a PMF statement.

A drone attack targeted the home of the president of Iraq’s Kurdistan Region early on Saturday, security sources said, in an incident that comes as tensions continue to rise across northern Iraq.

Air defences also shot down a drone near a Peshmerga fighters base in Duhok, the sources added.

The strikes come amid a surge in attacks on both Iran-aligned militias and Kurdish forces as the US-Israeli war on Iran spills over into Iraq, drawing in multiple armed groups and straining Baghdad’s efforts to contain the fallout.

PM talks to Barzani

Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani condemned the attack on Kurdish President Nechirvan Barzanis home and spoke with him by phone, his office said.

Sudani ordered the creation of a joint federal-Kurdistan security and technical team to investigate the incidents and identify those responsible, the statement added. Airstrikes have been targeting sites belonging to Iraq’s umbrella group for Iran-backed Shia militias, the Popular Mobilisation Forces, and Kurdish Peshmerga fighters in Iraq’s Kurdistan since the start of the US-Israeli war against Iran.

Iraq’s military accused the US and Israel of carrying out some of the airstrikes on the PMF.

Tehran-backed armed groups have also launched attacks on US bases in Iraq and the US embassy.

US-Iraq ties

The United States and Iraq will “intensify cooperation” to prevent attacks and ensure Iraqi territory is not used to launch assaults against US facilities, Washington’s embassy in Baghdad said in a statement.

Since the war began on Feb 28 with US-Israeli strikes on Iran, Iraq has been increasingly drawn into a conflict it had sought to avoid at all costs. Pro-Iran Iraqi armed groups have carried out drone and rocket attacks against multiple US targets including the embassy in Baghdad.

These pro-Iran factions, some of which are integrated into the Iraqi security forces, have themselves been regularly targeted by strikes, which the groups have blamed on the US or Israel.

The US embassy and Iraq released statements late on Friday, announcing the creation of a “High Joint Coordination Committee” to oversee efforts to tackle attacks in Iraq.

“The Iraqi and US sides decided to intensify cooperation to prevent terrorist attacks and ensure that Iraqi territory is not used as a launching point for any aggression against the Iraqi people, the Iraqi Security Forces, Iraqi strategic facilities and assets, as well as against US personnel, diplomatic missions, and the Global Coalition,” the US embassy in Baghdad said in a statement posted on X.

Relations between Washington and Baghdad have been strained as the Middle East war has gone on, with the latter particularly unhappy over a strike on a medical clinic in western Iraq that killed seven members of the security forces.

It has not officially blamed the United States, but did summon the country’s charge d’affaires over the strike. Washington has strongly denied targeting Iraqi security forces.

Erbil airport attack

Earlier this week, Iraq granted the Popular Mobilisation Forces — a coalition of armed groups integrated into the regular armed forces that includes pro-Tehran factions — permission to “confront and respond” to attacks after 15 of its fighters were killed in an airstrike.

Hours after the announcement on Friday, a journalist heard an explosion near the international airport in Erbil, with a witness saying they saw smoke.

The city is home to a major US consulate complex, and the airport hosts military advisors with the US-led anti-jihadist international coalition.

Late on Friday, the influential Tehran-backed Kataeb Hezbollah — designated a terror organisation by Washington — announced it would extend a pause on attacks against the US embassy.

It first announced the pause on March 19 and has extended it once already.

Published in Dawn, March 29th, 2026