Air strike hits Iraq base housing pro-Iran group: faction sources

An air strike hit a military base in southern Iraq housing the Iran-backed Kataeb Hezbollah group on Tuesday (March 3, 2026), two sources from the armed faction said.

The Jurf al-Nasr base, which serves as one of the main bastions of the powerful Tehran-backed group, has been struck several times since the war in the West Asia broke out, starting in the early hours of the U.S.-Israeli campaign against Iran.

The strikes have since expanded to other areas, and more than 10 fighters, mostly from Kataeb Hezbollah, have been killed across Iraq since Saturday.

A second source from the group said Tuesday’s strike only caused material damage.

Iraq, which recently regained a sense of stability but has long been a proxy battleground between the U.S. and Iran, said it did not want to be dragged into the war. But it has not been spared.

Several Iran-backed armed groups — known as the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, to which Kataeb Hezbollah also belongs — have said they will not stay “neutral” and have claimed dozens of drone attacks on U.S. bases.

A drone was shot down on Tuesday (March 3, 2026) evening near Baghdad International Airport, the Iraqi government’s security media cell said.

Hours earlier, security forces announced that they seized nine rockets and a launchpad that were set up to target the airport, which includes a military base that hosts American advisers and previously housed U.S.-led coalition troops.

Since the war started, the autonomous Kurdistan region, which hosts U.S. troops, has been the main target of drone attacks, the majority of which were intercepted by air defences.

An AFP correspondent reported that a strike on Tuesday (March 3, 2026) night hit Kurdistan’s Sulaimaniyah, the second-largest city in the autonomous region.

Kurdish security forces said that a drone struck an area near a building that previously served as a United Nations office in the city, with no casualties reported.

Loud bangs were again heard in Erbil, the capital of the Kurdistan region, AFP journalists reported.

Earlier in the day, drone strikes blamed on Iran hit a camp hosting Iranian Kurdish fighters and family members in Iraqi Kurdistan, a local official and an exiled opposition group told AFP.

AFP photographers at the scene reported damage to rooms used as lodgings for the camp’s hospital staff.

Iraq’s Kurdish region hosts camps and rear-bases operated by several Iranian Kurdish rebel groups that have repeatedly faced cross-border strikes from Iran, which has long accused them of serving Western or Israeli interests.