---

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

Armed drone targets US base in northern Iraq
Reuters | January 5, 202410:48 AM CST
BAGHDAD, Jan 5 (Reuters) - An armed drone on Friday hit Iraq's al-Harir airbase, where U.S. and international forces are stationed, Iraqi Kurdistan's counter-terrorism service said. A service statement did not elaborate on whether the attack caused casualties or infrastructure damage.A group called the Islamic Resistance in Iraq said it had attacked al-Harir military base by drone. Friday's action took place a day after the U.S. military carried out a retaliatory strike in Baghdad that killed a militia leader it blames for recent attacks on U.S. personnel, the Pentagon said.

---

---

Name: Al-Muqawama al-Islamiyah fi al-Iraq (the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, or IRI). An umbrella term used to describe the operations of all Iran-backed militias in Iraq, including strikes into Syria during the October 2023 conflict between Israel and Hamas.

Type of movement: Kinetic military operations, both national and transnational. Anti-U.S. targets in Iraq and Syria, stemming from the U.S. role in the Gaza crisis.

History: During the October 2023 conflict between Israel and Hamas, Iraqi muqawama (resistance) militias attacked U.S. troops based in Iraq and Syria. They have claimed the following attacks under the IRI brand:

• October 17, 2023: drone attack on Harir Air Base in Iraqi Kurdistan. This attack was initially claimed by Tashkil al-Waritheen; soon thereafter, a superseding claim was issued by the IRI brand and the Waritheen claim was removed in deference. One Qasef-2K drone was used in the strike.
• Twenty subsequent attacks on U.S. forces in Iraq and Syria as of October 30, 2023.

Objectives:

• To allow various Iraqi muqawama militias to launch attacks against U.S. troops in Iraq and Syria under one umbrella term.
• The militias may see benefit in obscuring which exact groups are attacking U.S. bases.
• Using a generic, no-logo brand is perhaps the ultimate extension of the “facade strategy” that Iran and its proxies have used since 2019 to avoid accountability for attacks on Americans.

• To show unity behind attacks against U.S. interests during the Israel-Hamas conflict, essentially "reporting for duty" as one force. This strongly suggests that Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF) is corralling its many Iraqi "resistance" proxies, which otherwise tend to argue over local leadership.

Chain of command:

• The balance of available evidence suggests that the IRGC-QF plays a role in coordinating the IRI brand. Iraqi armed groups tend to jealously guard their individual identities and the credit they derive (directly or via facade groups linked to them) from attacks, so their willingness to submerge these identities and even recant an individual group attack claim suggests that a higher power is coordinating them. Furthermore, co-branding with Tashkil al-Waritheen in the October 17 strike on Harir indicates a direct link to an IRGC-QF direct-operated group with close ties to Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba.
• Harakat Hezbollah al-Nujaba has publicly affiliated itself with the IRI brand, releasing a threatening video on October 30, 2023, that includes footage of drone attacks originally published on IRI's Telegram channel. These videos purported to show the moment of launch for a number of drone attacks on U.S. positions. Nujaba did not actively claim to control IRI, though it is likely some of the attacks claimed by this facade group were carried out by teams controlled by Nujaba.
• The Iraqi Resistance Coordination Committee (al-Haya al-Tansiqiya lil-Muqawama al-Iraqiya, or Tansiqiya for short).

---

---

NEW DELHI (Reuters) -Indian Navy commandos have boarded a hijacked Liberian-flagged vessel in the Arabian Sea and are now carrying out "sanitisation" operations, the navy said on Friday, without elaborating.
An Indian Navy warship intercepted the MV Lila Norfolk on Friday afternoon, less than a day after the navy received news that it had been hijacked off Somalia's coast in the North Arabian Sea.
At least 15 Indian crew members were on board the vessel, which was hijacked near Somalia's coast and the navy received information about it on Thursday evening, Indian news agency ANI, in which Reuters has a minority stake, reported earlier, citing military officials.

The warship INS Chennai was diverted and deployed to assist the vessel, the navy said earlier in the day, adding that a naval aircraft overflew the hijacked vessel on Friday and had established contact with it.
The Indian navy has increased its surveillance of the Arabian Sea after a recent spate of attacks in the region.

It said earlier this week that it had investigated a large number of fishing vessel and boarded vessels of interest in the region.

The hijacking of commercial ships and attempted hijackings by suspected pirates near the Gulf of Aden and Arabian Sea regions resumed in December after a six-year lull. Experts believe this is because naval forces led by the U.S. have diverted their attention to the Red Sea to thwart Houthi attacks.

"The sudden revival in ship hijacking and attacks can only be attributed to the pirates' willingness to take advantage of the fact that the focus of anti-piracy maritime forces has largely shifted from the Gulf of Aden to the Red Sea," Abhijit Singh, head of the Maritime Policy Initiative at the Observer Research Foundation think tank in New Delhi said.

"India plays the role of a net security provider in the entire Indian Ocean region. We will ensure that maritime trade in this region rises from the sea to the heights of the sky," Defence Minister Rajnath Singh said last month of the increased surveillance in the region.

India is not part of the U.S.-led Red Sea task force.

---

---

---

---

---

---

​​​​​​​https://x.com/osint613/status/174408...HhlFHGKbTPQr_A

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

---

---