Drone carrying explosives shot down near Iraq's Erbil airport
The counter-terrorism agency in the Kurdistan region said no casualties or damage had been reported, but the incident, at 9.58pm local time, delayed the landing of one aircraft.
It was unclear who was responsible for the attack.
Erbil's airport authority said 'flight operations continued normally and the airport was not affected by any damage'.
The National has contacted authorities in Erbil for further comment.
Erbil is the capital of Iraq's three-province Kurdistan region. The airport often comes under attack as it hosts an American airbase with hundreds of military personnel.
The US usually blames such incidents on Iran-backed militias in Iraq. Iranian proxy groups have frequently threatened to expand attacks on US bases in the region.
In recent days, drone and rocket attacks have been reported in several areas of Iraq, including drones that landed in open spaces.
Earlier on Thursday, an explosive-packed drone fell near Kirkuk airport, which was also struck on Monday by two rockets, a senior security official told news agency AFP.
Kirkuk airport hosts Iraqi army units, federal police and the Hashed Al Shaabi, a coalition of pro-Iran former paramilitary forces now integrated into Iraq's regular armed forces.
On Tuesday, Iraq's anti-aircraft defence engaged at least one drone near the key oil refinery of Baiji in Salaheddin province.
The incidents follow a 12-day aerial war between Iran and Israel that killed hundreds of people. During the war, several radar systems in Iraq were attacked by unidentified drones targeting military bases. Dozens of drones and missiles were seen flying through Iraqi airspace.
One drone hit a radar system at Al Taji military base, north of Baghdad. Another drone attacked the radar system at the Imam Ali airbase in the southern Dhi Qar province, according to the government in Baghdad.
Iraq has long been a battleground of drone and rocket attacks and has proved fertile ground for proxy wars. The country has only recently regained a semblance of stability after decades of devastating conflicts and turmoil.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The National
11 hours ago
- The National
From sanctuary to scrutiny: Afghans in America face the weight of Trump's immigration clampdown
Sayed Naser was due to attend a family wedding in September 2023 when the Taliban killed his brother, he says, forcing him into hiding and eventually prompting him to flee Afghanistan. Mr Naser says he worked with US forces during the country's two-decade war, as a translator and logistics contractor at several military bases. This made him and his family a target for reprisal attacks after the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and fall of Kabul. Fearing for his life, Mr Naser escaped to Iran before obtaining a humanitarian visa for Brazil. He travelled to the country in 2024 and, from there, made the treacherous overland journey through the Darien Gap to Mexico, covering thousands of kilometres. Advocates for Mr Naser say he was paroled into the US legally at San Ysidro using the CBP One app, a mobile tool developed by the US Customs and Border Protection to schedule appointments for non-citizens seeking to enter the US at designated spots along the country's southern border. The app has since been made defunct by the US administration of President Donald Trump as part of the government's clampdown on immigration. Mr Naser applied for asylum when he arrived and also has a continuing case for a Special Immigrant Visa, which gives a way to permanent residency for foreign nationals who have worked with the US government and face serious threats because of their service. When Mr Naser attended a court hearing for his asylum case in San Diego on June 12, he was detained by two masked agents with the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. Footage of the arrest shows Mr Naser being handcuffed while he explains his situation to the officers. 'For more than three years I worked with the US military back in my home country," he tells them. 'I worked in a very dangerous part of Afghanistan … I have all the evidence.' Advocacy groups backing Mr Naser say an immigration judge dismissed his asylum case, granting a motion by the Department of Homeland Security that it was 'improvidently issued'. Shawn VanDiver, who was in the US Navy and is president of AfghanEvac, an organisation helping to relocate and resettle Afghan allies of the US, told The National that Mr Naser is now at serious risk of being deported to a country where he faces an uncertain future. 'With one stroke of a pen, Sayed was thrust into a secretive, fast-track deportation pipeline that offers no courtroom and no lawyer," Mr VanDiver said. 'That could see him flown out of the country within days – possibly not even to Afghanistan, but to any third nation President Trump picks.' The US Supreme Court in a recent ruling allowed the Trump administration to deport migrants to countries other than their own without offering them a chance to show harm they could face, handing the President another win in his pursuit of mass deportations. That case was filed after the administration tried to send a group of primarily South-East Asian migrants to politically unstable South Sudan. Reports suggest officials are also considering sending migrants to Libya, despite previous US condemnation of that country's treatment of those detained. Brian McGoldrick, a lawyer working for Mr Naser, told The National his client was 'very dejected' on learning that his asylum case had been dismissed. If he is not immediately deported, he could spend the foreseeable future in detention while authorities come to a ruling. 'It's already been a long process for him," Mr McGoldrick said. The department did not respond to a request for comment on Mr Naser's case. Tricia McLaughlin, assistant secretary for public affairs at the DHS, told PBS: 'We were working with the Pentagon and we found there was no verifiable information that Mr Naser worked with the US government while he was in Afghanistan.' His advocates say her comments are untrue, and that he was vetted through the CBP One app and his application for work authorisation in the US. 'Broadly, the Department of Defence didn't keep records,' Mr VanDiver said. 'The record-keeping was on the Afghan wartime allies themselves.' Democratic senator Chris Coons of Delaware called Mr Naser's detention 'one of the most heartbreaking betrayals of the Trump administration.' 'He should not be facing imminent deportation," Mr Coons said. Mr VanDiver added: 'Masked ICE agents, like the Gestapo, are snatching people up and throwing them in jail. They stood with us in war. This is the thanks they get. People are absolutely terrified … they don't know what to do.' 'No other option' On a hot and humid day in the outskirts of Richmond, Virginia, Abdullah Zarify is rolling out handmade rugs in the city's Watan Market, a business he built himself after escaping to the US as the Taliban seized Kabul. Mr Zarify worked with an American defence contractor during the US war and, along with several members of his family, was among the tens of thousands of Afghans who were evacuated on military planes as the militants entered Kabul in 2021. 'We didn't have any other option', he told The National. Mr Zarify, 29, secured an SIV through his employment and has since obtained permanent residency in the US, where he now lives with his wife, three children, two brothers and mother. His two sisters remain in Afghanistan and his father has died. 'I want a peaceful life', Mr Zarify said. 'We had to leave our country to save ourselves and save our children … nothing is guaranteed there.' As part of the continuing clampdown on immigration, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem announced in May that the US government would suspend Temporary Protected Status – an immigration classification granted to people from certain countries facing unsafe conditions – for Afghans. 'Afghanistan has had an improved security situation," Ms Noem said in a statement, which noted that allowing Afghans to stay in the US was against the national interest. 'Its stabilising economy no longer prevents them from returning to their home country.' TPS is set to end for Afghans on July 14. It comes as the State Department continues to advise against all travel to Afghanistan with its highest warning of 'Level 4: Do not travel', because of civil unrest, terrorism and kidnapping across the country. 'US citizens are advised not to go to Afghanistan," Mr Zarify says. 'If [Ms Noem] says it is safe … why do you give an advisory to US citizens? I know my country's situation and I know my people don't deserve to be deported.' While Mr Zarify's status in the US is considerably safer than those on TPS, he sympathises with fellow evacuees under threat of deportation, saying he has heard of cases in which Afghans have been tortured by the Taliban for speaking out about their rights. He is also a vocal critic of the group's stance on women. The Taliban has barred women from travelling without a male guardian and stopped girls from attending high school. 'Who wants their children to be uneducated?' Mr Zarify asks. 'I have a daughter and I want her to go to school. Uneducated means blind … do you want to raise your children blind?' 'Amnesty for all' The Taliban has urged Afghans hoping to live in the US to return to Afghanistan, with Prime Minister Hasan Akhund promising to protect those who worked alongside US forces. 'For those who are worried that America has closed its doors to Afghans … return to your country … you will not face trouble,' he said in a speech that was broadcast on state media to mark Eid Al Adha. In June, Afghanistan was included in a US travel ban on citizens from 12 countries, in what Mr Trump says is a move to protect America from 'foreign terrorists'. That came as an Afghan national who was evacuated amid the fall of Kabul and moved to Oklahoma, Nasir Ahmed Tawhedi, 27, pleaded guilty to plotting an election day terrorist attack in the US on behalf of ISIS. Taliban supreme leader Hibatullah Akhundzada has, according to Mr Akhund, 'granted amnesty for all". Mr VanDiver has rejected the idea that it is safe for Afghans to return to their country. 'The folks that served alongside us are marked for death by the Taliban … we get pictures all the time of Afghans who are killed," he says. 'Sure, the Taliban has all this propaganda out there … we know what's really happening and we know it's not safe. I have some oceanfront property in Arizona to sell you if you believe the Taliban has an amnesty.' Mr Naser, who is being held at the Otay Mesa detention centre in southern California, has indirectly addressed Mr Trump since being detained. 'Please don't turn your back on us', he said in a message delivered by Mr VanDiver during a press conference. 'Keep your promises, let me live in peace with my family in this country that I love.'
The National
11 hours ago
- The National
Introducing my son to Lebanon helped me heal my relationship with home
As the wheels touch down on the tarmac at Beirut's Rafic Hariri International Airport, my wife and I turn to our 20-month-old son, Dia, kiss his soft head and whisper: 'Welcome home.' Then we both cry. It's his first time in Lebanon – a trip long delayed by an interminable war. Like many Lebanese born in the diaspora, my relationship to the country has always been complicated. Raised abroad, I absorbed it through Sunday meals at Lebanese restaurants in London, family stories and summer visits. As a teenager and young adult, I would go on to live there for 10 years, turning it into a site of belonging and often heartbreak. For the past five years, I've been estranged from it. I had seen a lot during my years in Lebanon, but nothing broke me like the August 4 Beirut port explosion. I felt I lost too much that day. I almost lost my father, who was in a building by the port. We couldn't locate him for hours. I lost far less important things – our company's brand-new office, my car, work projects. After that trip, I left broken. Something had snapped in my already tense relationship with a country that was often exhausting to live in, however much I loved it. Since then, I've only returned for work, family emergencies or deaths. My relationship with Lebanon calcified into something unpleasant. But something shifted on this trip. I came back as a different person. I came back as a father. Lebanon today feels hopeful but precarious – a country both limping out of war and still staggering from the collapse of 2019. The streets are tired. Shoots of wild grass protrude from the pavements and highways. I have become obsessed with these unkempt public roads. They remind me of the way Lebanon looked at the end of the civil war. The country has the air of an aristocratic home fallen into disrepair – once proud, now crumbling, its residents unable to afford its upkeep. But still full of life and stories. But none of that matters when I see my son here. To see how he belongs to this place. He's surrounded by doting grandparents. Even the neighbours beam when they see him. He devours zaatar and stuffed vine leaves. He's wide-eyed with curiosity. As Lebanese, our link to the motherland can often be tied to the kind of nostalgia these scenes can evoke. Nostalgia is a powerful, sometimes dangerous thing. It led many in our diaspora to invest life savings in Lebanon out of duty or hope, only to watch them vanish in the banking collapse. I used to be so weary of that dangerous form of nostalgia that led people to be irrational. But I find myself understanding it this time. For me, returning to Lebanon has always carried a hint of regression. Like anyone revisiting their parents' home, you slip back into old habits, old roles. You unlearn everything that's happened in the intervening years. But this time is different. There's no regression – only transformation. I'm here not as a son, but as a father. I'm not trying to make sense of my place, I'm building a bridge for my son between his heritage and his future. In a recent therapy session, while speaking about my connection to the Mediterranean, I had a surprising realisation: it wasn't the sea I was so anchored to. It was the mountain. I wanted to see if Dia had the same connection. On a visit to Jaj – a village 1,200 metres above the historic coastal town of Byblos – my wife's aunt left some cherries unpicked in the garden just for Dia. He picked them himself, dropping them into a plastic tub with glee. Nour noticed the cherries at the top had been pecked at. 'The top of the tree is for the birds,' her aunt said. 'The bottom is for us.' One simple sentence. Centuries of understanding how to live with the land, not just on it. And now, my son is learning that wisdom. And through him, so am I. Back in Beirut, we realise the city is not exactly toddler-friendly. Pavements are often a suggestion. When they do exist, they're broken, cluttered, blocked by scooters and cars. Electrical cables dangle from poles. It's whatever the opposite of baby-proof is. One afternoon, Nour suggests we might find more space to roam by taking Dia to my alma mater – the American University of Beirut. I haven't set foot there in years. I don't often reminisce about my time there, or much else. But walking through the main gate feels like a reckoning. I tell the security guard I remember my student number – a strange fact to recall from 2001. He pulls up my record, and there it is: my old ID photo. I barely recognise the boy in the image – fresh-faced and naive. Closer in age to Dia than to me now. I'm carrying my son and pointing at the ID photo on the screen, wondering if he'll recognise me. He smiles. Maybe he does. Maybe he's just happy to be here too. As he runs around the grounds of the 19th-century campus, I remember something Nour told me recently – about mycelium networks that connect trees underground, allowing forests to share resources and nutrients. That's how I feel, watching my son plant his feet on this soil. He's connected to people he's never met, to land he's never seen. And in watching him, I realise I'm part of that network too, in a way I haven't felt in years.
The National
11 hours ago
- The National
What happens if Iran were to acquire the bomb?
The recent attacks on Iran and its nuclear facilities shocked the global community. While the world watches closely for further developments and hopes for a diplomatic resolution to this crisis, the attacks on Iran and its next steps will have a profound impact on the nuclear non-proliferation regime. The existing nuclear non-proliferation regime, established to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons, is based on the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT), negotiated in 1968. It enjoys nearly universal membership and was instrumental in preventing the acquisition of nuclear weapons by another two dozen states, as was predicted before the treaty was put in place. Iran, a party to the NPT, threatened to withdraw even before the attacks. If Iran were to leave the NPT and focus on resurrecting its nuclear programme to build nuclear weapons, it would deal a major blow to the non-proliferation regime and its credibility. Moreover, regardless of Iran's decision about its membership in the NPT or pursuit of nuclear weapons, the damage to the efforts to curtail the proliferation of nuclear weapons has already been done. The 21st century has witnessed several attacks by nuclear-armed states against non-nuclear-weapon states, including the 2003 invasion of Iraq, with the rationale of preventing the alleged acquisition of nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction. Some countries, like Libya, agreed to give up the pursuit of nuclear weapons and were nonetheless attacked later. Ukraine, which inherited a nuclear weapons arsenal from the Soviet Union, gave them back to Russia and joined the NPT as a non-nuclear-weapon state. Many in Ukraine today ask themselves whether the decision to forgo nuclear weapons was the right one, and whether Ukraine would have been attacked if it had chosen to keep them. Countries also look at North Korea, which left the NPT and rushed to build nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles capable of reaching the US as a deterrent against military attacks. So far, this strategy has worked, and North Korea continues to expand and enhance its nuclear arsenal, proudly exhibiting it to ensure the US and others get the message. With the waning reliability of US commitments to its allies, some states may decide that they can only protect themselves with the ultimate deterrent – nuclear weapons. In South Korea, for example, public opinion already favours the nuclear weapons option. Iran's nuclear programme has made countries in the Middle East and beyond nervous for decades. We've heard disconcerting statements from Turkey and Saudi Arabia regarding a potential pursuit of nuclear weapons if Iran were to acquire the bomb. Would attacks on Iran and its nuclear programme shift the calculus of some of these countries regarding their own nuclear ambitions, serving as a catalyst for further nuclear proliferation? Iran insists on the peaceful nature of its programme. However, several elements of it were developed without a particular need for an existing or even planned nuclear energy programme and have been a source of proliferation concern. Iran was on the verge of having everything, including significant stocks of highly enriched uranium, but the bomb itself. It played the nuclear hedging game for over two decades but vastly expanded and accelerated it in the last couple of years. Future proliferators will take note of the risks posed by the ambiguity of their intentions while acquiring nuclear technologies and capabilities that could lead to weaponisation. It remains to be seen whether Iran will leave the NPT and focus on resurrecting its nuclear programme. Iran has already moved forward with the suspension of International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) safeguards, a key component of the non-proliferation regime that inspects nuclear activities and facilities and is a legal obligation under the NPT. It would be in its own interest to return to full co-operation with the IAEA and offer full transparency of its nuclear programme. Ultimately, further proliferation in the region, ignited by Iran's withdrawal from the NPT and pursuit of nuclear weapons, would be against Iran's own interests. Beyond a diplomatic solution to the existing crisis, there are several steps that NPT states could pursue to prevent further proliferation in the Middle East and beyond. One of these is an explicit legal obligation or regional agreement not to pursue national programmes for uranium enrichment and reprocessing of spent fuel – two critical elements of the nuclear fuel cycle capable of producing fissile material for nuclear weapons. In this regard, the UAE stands as an example of steering clear of any ambiguity in its nuclear power programme. In its agreement on nuclear co-operation with the US (the so-called 123 agreement), it took on an obligation not to pursue these sensitive technologies. Another option is for any new facility involving enrichment and reprocessing to be established as an international or multilateral facility subject to international safeguards. One could argue that robust regional and international co-operation on nuclear energy and its peaceful applications could eventually pave the way for co-operation, transparency and trust-building among countries in the region. Another way to alleviate proliferation concerns in the Middle East is the establishment of a regional verification arrangement to supplement IAEA safeguards, modelled on the Brazilian-Argentine Agency for Accounting and Control of Nuclear Materials (ABACC). Such an arrangement could build confidence in the peaceful nature of nuclear activities. In recent years, interest in nuclear power as a carbon-neutral energy source has significantly increased, including in the Middle East. It holds the promise of reliable and clean energy, with uses in various other applications beyond electricity generation, including desalination of water and many other benefits. For this promise to be realised, the NPT must hold firm, and the system of checks on proliferation must remain in place.
