U.S. troops in Iraq receive treatment after militia shelling as region’s tensions mount

American personnel in Iraq suffered minor injuries and an Iraqi security officer was wounded in the Iraqi militias’ latest attack on the Ain al-Asad air base, according to reports.

The Pentagon’s Central Command said Saturday in a statement that the base had come under fire from multiple ballistic missiles and rockets launched from inside Iraq, believed to have been fired by Shiite militias with close ties to Iran. The statement said that U.S. personnel were being evaluated for traumatic brain injury.

The attack came as the weekend marked a grim milestone: Unconfirmed tallies from Gaza health officials now put the number of Palestinian fighters and civilians killed in Israel’s campaign to avenge Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist attack at more than 25,000.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, attending a developing world summit in Kampala, Uganda, on Sunday, called the number of deaths “heartbreaking” and pressed again for both Israel and its adversaries across the region to pull back.

“This is heartbreaking and utterly unacceptable,” Mr. Guterres told reporters. “The Middle East is a tinderbox, we must do all we can to prevent conflict from igniting across the region.”

Global pressure, including from the Biden administration, has been building on Israel to pull back the Gaza campaign. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, however, has vowed to press forward to destroy Hamas and to free more than 100 captives still held by the Palestinian militant group. Israeli officials argue that a cease-fire will only give Hamas time to regroup and rearm, and will make freeing the hostages even more difficult.

Mr. Biden and Mr. Netanyahu reportedly held a tense phone call Friday — their first known direct communication in nearly four weeks — in which the Israeli leader again rejected what U.S. officials say is a necessary component of any end to the war and lasting political settlement: a “two-state solution” establishing an independent Palestinian state in Gaza and the West Bank.

The Iraqi violence was just one theater where the violence sparked by the Israeli-Hamas fighting threatened to ignite a much larger war. The Reuters news service cited sources saying that at least two people were killed and several others injured in a suspected Israeli drone strike on Sunday that targeted a car in southern Lebanon, including at least one official of the Iran-aligned Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah movement.

Saturday’s missile barrages in Iraq also came after a suspected Israeli airstrike killed at least five senior Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps officers in Damascus on Friday. Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi said the attacks reflected what he said was Israel’s increasing desperation with the failure of its Gaza offensive and vowed the strikes ” will not go unanswered by the Islamic Republic of Iran.”

The Associated Press reported that Israel’s military also announced the death of 19-year-old Sgt. Shay Levinson, who had been listed among the hostages. According to Israeli media, he was believed to have been killed in the Oct. 7 attack but his body is still in Gaza.

Along with other Iran-allied forces across the region, the Iraqi militias, which are loosely aligned under Iraq’s overall military, have stepped up attacks on U.S. forces stationed in Iraq in the wake of the Israeli-Hamas fighting.

The Pentagon has kept deployments in Iraq and neighboring Syria, saying they are needed to combat Islamic State fighters still operating in the region.

But the forces have become both a target and a political headache, exacerbated by the tensions generated by the Gaza war. Since the Israel-Hamas war began, the U.S. military has come under attack at least 58 times in Iraq and 83 times in Syria by Iran-backed militants, the Reuters news service reported Sunday.

Iraqi lawmakers have also stepped up a campaign to demand U.S. forces leave the country after a U.S. drone strike on Jan. 4 killed a senior militia leader in Baghdad whom U.S. officials said was responsible for planning attacks on American forces.