BAGHDAD, Sept. 18 (Xinhua) -- A roadside bomb exploded on Friday near a convoy of trucks carrying equipment belonging to the U.S.-led coalition forces in Salahudin province in the north of Baghdad, the Iraqi military said.
The explosion took place in the evening when a convoy of vehicles of an Iraqi company contracted with the international coalition in Iraq was moving in al-Ishaqi area, some 100 km north of Baghdad, leaving a soldier wounded, the media office of the Iraqi Joint Operations Command (JOC) said in a statement.
No group has yet claimed responsibility for the attack, but unidentified militant groups have frequently targeted civilian convoys contracted to the U.S.-led coalition forces in Iraq, which usually travel from neighboring Kuwait to the coalition's bases in central and northern Iraq.
The attacks continued despite the recent announcement of the U.S. President Donald Trump that the U.S. troops "will be down to about 2,000 soldiers in a very short period of time."
The militants' 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.
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
