Iraqi Shiite militia claims rocket attack on airbase housing US forces in W Iraq

BAGHDAD -- The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an Iraqi Shiite militia, claimed responsibility Saturday for launching rockets toward the Ayn al-Asad Airbase in Iraq's western province of Anbar.

The militia group said in an online statement that its fighters launched a "rocket barrage" on the Ayn al-Asad Airbase near the town of al-Baghdadi, some 190 km northwest of the capital Baghdad.

Yahya Rasoul, the military spokesman of Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia' al-Sudani, told the official Iraqi News Agency (INA) that several rockets landed near the headquarters of the army's 29th Brigade within the airbase, wounding a soldier and causing damage.

The Iraqi security forces, supported by the intelligence effort, will reach the perpetrators and bring them to justice, Rasould told INA.

Earlier in the day, an army source told Xinhua that about 20 rockets were fired toward the airbase in the afternoon and the air defense weapons shot down most of the rockets except for one rocket that landed in an empty area inside the airbase.

The source added that a soldier was wounded by the shrapnels after the rockets were intercepted by air defense weapons and exploded in the air.