Three US troops wounded in rocket attacks on Iraq’s Taji base

Three American troops and several Iraqi forces were wounded on Saturday in the second major rocket attack in the past week on an Iraqi base north of Baghdad, US and Iraqi officials said, raising the stakes in an escalating cycle of attacks and reprisals.

Iraq's Joint Operations Command said 33 Katyusha rockets were launched near a section of the Taji base which houses US-led coalition troops. It said the military found seven rocket launchers and 24 unused rockets in the nearby Abu Izam area.

The Iraqi military said several Iraqi air defense servicemen were critically wounded. Two of the three wounded US troops are seriously injured and are being treated at a military hospital in Baghdad, the Pentagon said.

Pentagon spokesman Jonathan Hoffman declined to speculate on potential US responses but, in a statement, citing Defense Secretary Mark Esper's warning two weeks ago: "You cannot attack and wound American Service Members and get away with it, we will hold them to account."

The rocket attacks came less than two days after the US launched retaliatory air strikes at facilities in Iraq that the Pentagon linked to the Iran-backed Kataib Hezbollah militia, which it blamed for Wednesday's attack on Taji.

The retaliatory strikes were meant to deter militia from staging any more rocket attacks.

Not only did the retaliatory strikes appear to fail to stem more attacks on the US-led coalition, Iraq protested the US air strikes and said members of its security forces were among the dead.