Washington Post:

BAGHDAD — Iraqi leaders moved to quell a growing crisis Wednesday after Iranian missile strikes on two bases that house U.S. troops threatened to yank the country deeper into violence.

Iranian officials said the missile strikes early Wednesday, the most significant attacks on U.S. interests in Iraq in years, were a response to the killing of Iranian commander Qasem Soleimani in a U.S. drone strike in last week. The strikes came amid an accelerating campaign by Iran to push out coalition troops and cement its own status as the most powerful outside influence in the country.

But Tehran’s early claim to mass casualties gave way to a flurry of statements from Iraqi officials that no military personnel had been hurt — and in some cases, the missiles had landed far from their apparent targets.

“We have not received any casualties so far on the Iraqi side, and we have not officially received the losses on the side of the coalition forces,” Iraqi Prime Minister Adel Abdul Mahdi said in a statement. His office said it received advanced warning from Iran about the impending strikes, which was passed on to the Iraqi military and, from there, to the coalition.

 

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