IRAQI authorities said on Saturday that they were investigating an explosion that struck a base belonging to the Popular Mobilisation Forces, a coalition of Iran-allied militias, killing one person and injuring eight. Militia officials had initially described the explosion at the Kalsu military base north of Babylon — a former US base that was handed over to the Iraqi military in 2011 — as an airstrike, blaming it on US forces. The US Central Command denied in a statement that it had carried out any airstrikes in Iraq. The PMF in a statement Saturday afternoon described the blast as an “attack” but did not blame any specific party. Iraq’s Security Media Cell said the country’s air defence command had not detected any drones or fighter plane in the airspace of Babylon before or during the explosion. It said one PMF member died and eight people were injured, including an Iraqi army soldier.

 

The PMF is a coalition of primarily Shiite, Iran-backed armed groups designated as an “independent military formation” within the Iraqi armed forces. In recent months, some of the PMF member groups launched attacks on US forces based in Iraq and Syria, which they said was in retaliation for Washington’s support of Israel in its war against Hamas in Gaza. Those attacks halted at the end of January after three US soldiers were killed in a strike on a base in Jordan, near the Syrian border, prompting US retaliatory strikes in Iraq. The explosion at the PMF base came a day after a suspected Israeli strike in Iran. An umbrella group of Iran-backed militias calling itself the Islamic Resistance in Iraq said Saturday that it had launched a drone attack against the Israeli Red Sea town of Eilat in response to what it described as Israel’s “violation of Iraqi sovereignty in its treacherous targeting of the Popular Mobilization Forces camps.”

 

There were no reports in Israel of an attack on Eilat and no immediate comment from the Israeli military. Iranian Foreign Minister in New York: Ease Middle East tensions: IRANIAN Foreign Minister Hussein Amirabdollahian has come out in favour of easing tensions in the Middle East in remarks to Iranian media in New York on Saturday, following tit-for-tat attacks between Israel and Iran. “War and military tensions are of no benefit to any party in the region, and so fundamental solutions must be found,” Amirabdollahian said. All sides needed to focus on a political solution, he said. Israel had to cease “its war crimes” in the region, Amirabdollahian said. Humanitarian aid and an exchange of hostages for prisoners in the Gaza conflict would then become possible, he said at the end of a trip to the US. While in New York, where he joined several sessions of the United Nations, Amirabdollahian emphasised that Iran would not react to attacks on military targets in Iran’s central Isfahan Province on Friday that have been attributed to Israel. “Neither damage nor victims were caused by the small drones shot down near Isfahan,” Amirabdollahian was quoted as saying.

 

The Foreign Minister described the attacks as an attempt by pro-Israeli media to show Israel’s military dominance. “The small downed drones were rather like the toys that our kids play with,” he is reported to have said. But he warned that Iran would respond “vehemently and firmly” to a real Israeli attack. Friday’s attacks on Isfahan, where Iran maintains key aspects of its nuclear arms industry, have widely been seen as a response to last weekend’s mass attack by Iranian drones and missiles on Israeli territory. That attack was in turn seen as a response to an attack on the Iranian embassy compound on April 1, which has been attributed to Israel.