BAGHDAD, July 5 (Xinhua) -- A child was wounded Sunday when a Katyusha rocket targeted the heavily fortified Green Zone in central the Iraqi capital Baghdad, while the security forces foiled another rocket attack on a military base near Baghdad, the Iraqi military said.
In one attack, a rocket was fired from Ali al-Salih neighborhood in downtown Baghdad, but went beyond the Green Zone to land near a house in Karrada district, wounding a child and causing damages to the house, the media office of the Iraqi Joint Operations Command (JOC) said in a statement.
In a separate incident, the security forces thwarted another attack in Um al-Adham area in eastern Baghdad when they seized a Katyusha rocket and a launcher, which apparently was directed toward the military al-Taji Camp, some 20 km north of Baghdad, the statement added.
No group has so far claimed responsibility for the attacks, as the military bases housing U.S. troops across Iraq and the U.S. embassy in the Green Zone have been frequently targeted by mortar and rocket attacks.
The attacks came as the Iraqi-U.S. relations have witnessed a tension since Jan. 3 when a U.S. drone struck a convoy at Baghdad airport, which killed Qassem Soleimani, former commander of the Quds Force of Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps, and Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, deputy chief of Iraq's paramilitary Hashd Shaabi forces.
The U.S. airstrike prompted the Iraqi parliament on Jan. 5 to pass a resolution requiring the government to end the presence of foreign forces in the country.
More than 5,000 U.S. troops have been deployed in Iraq to support the Iraqi forces in the battles against the Islamic State militants, mainly providing training and advising to the Iraqi forces. Enditem
