US Voices Outrage over Rocket Attacks in Iraq but Will Not 'Lash Out'

Iraqi counter-terrorism forces stand guard in front of the US Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq. (AFP file photo)
Iraqi counter-terrorism forces stand guard in front of the US Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq. (AFP file photo)
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US Voices Outrage over Rocket Attacks in Iraq but Will Not 'Lash Out'

Iraqi counter-terrorism forces stand guard in front of the US Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq. (AFP file photo)
Iraqi counter-terrorism forces stand guard in front of the US Embassy in Baghdad, Iraq. (AFP file photo)

The United States said on Monday it was outraged by rocket attacks on coalition forces and others in Iraq but stressed it would not “lash out” and would respond at a time and place of its choosing.

“We have seen the reports of the rocket fire today ... as you heard us say in the aftermath of the tragic attack in Erbil, we are outraged by the recent attacks,” US State Department spokesman Ned Price told reporters.

Most attacks cause no casualties but the latest rocket attack, on Monday, was the third in Iraq in just over a week to target Green Zone areas that host US troops, diplomats or contractors.

Price said the United States was still determining who was behind last week’s attack on the Erbil International Airport compound that killed a contractor working with US forces at the military base on the compound.

“When it comes to our response, we will respond in a way that’s calculated within our own timetable and using a mix of tools at a time and place of our choosing,” Price said of the Erbil attack. “What we will not do is lash out and risk an escalation that plays into the hands of Iran, and contributes to their attempts to further destabilize Iraq.”

At least two rockets hit Baghdad’s fortified Green Zone on Monday but caused no casualties, the Iraqi military said. The rockets in such attacks are typically fired by groups that US and Iraqi officials say are backed by Iran.



Families of Disappeared in Syria Want the Search to Continue on Conflict’s 14th Anniversary

 Family members hold pictures of their relatives who disappeared in the nearly 14-year Syrian civil war, during a protest calling on the interim government to not give up on efforts to find them, in the city of Daraa, Syria, Sunday, March 16, 2025. (AP)
Family members hold pictures of their relatives who disappeared in the nearly 14-year Syrian civil war, during a protest calling on the interim government to not give up on efforts to find them, in the city of Daraa, Syria, Sunday, March 16, 2025. (AP)
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Families of Disappeared in Syria Want the Search to Continue on Conflict’s 14th Anniversary

 Family members hold pictures of their relatives who disappeared in the nearly 14-year Syrian civil war, during a protest calling on the interim government to not give up on efforts to find them, in the city of Daraa, Syria, Sunday, March 16, 2025. (AP)
Family members hold pictures of their relatives who disappeared in the nearly 14-year Syrian civil war, during a protest calling on the interim government to not give up on efforts to find them, in the city of Daraa, Syria, Sunday, March 16, 2025. (AP)

Family members of Syrians who disappeared in the 14-year civil war on Sunday gathered in the city of Daraa and called on the interim government to not give up on efforts to find them.

The United Nations in 2021 estimated that over 130,000 Syrians were taken away and disappeared, many of them detained by Bashar al-Assad's network of intelligence agencies, as well as by opposition fighters and the extremist ISIS group. Advocacy group The Syrian Campaign says some 112,000 are still missing to this day.

When opposition led by group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham overthrew President Bashar Assad in April, they stormed prisons and released detainees from the ousted government's dungeons.

Families of the missing quickly rushed to the prisons seeking their loved ones. While there were some reunions, rescue services also discovered mass graves around the country and used whatever remains they could retrieve to identify the dead.

Wafa Mustafa held a placard of her father, Ali, who was detained by the Assad government's security forces in 2013. She fled a week later to Germany, fearing she would also be detained, and hasn't heard from him since.

Like many other Syrians who fled the conflict or went into exile for their activism, she often held protests and rallied in European cities. Now, she has returned twice since Assad's ouster, trying to figure out her father's whereabouts.

“I’m trying, feeling both hope and despair, to find any answer on the fate of my father,” she told The Associated Press. “I searched inside the prisons, the morgues, the hospitals, and through the bodies of the martyrs, but I still couldn’t find anything.”

A United Nations-backed commission on Friday urged the government led by interim President Ahmed al-Sharaa to preserve evidence and anything they can document from prisons in the ongoing search for the disappeared and to pursue perpetrators.

Some foreign nationals are missing in Syria as well, notably American journalist Austin Tice, whose mother visited Syria in January and met with al-Sharaa. Tice has not been heard from other than a video released weeks after his disappearance in 2012 that showed him blindfolded and held by armed men.

Syria’s conflict started as one of the popular uprisings of the so-called 2011 Arab Spring, before Assad crushed the largely peaceful protests and a civil war erupted. Half a million people have been killed and more than 5 million left the country as refugees.