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3. Drones Hit Oil Sites, Target Militants in Iraq

Drones hit an airport and oil facilities in southern Iraq on Friday, while in the north strikes and explosions mainly targeted Iranian militants.

In Iraq's southern Basra province, "a drone crashed into the cargo terminal at Basra airport," a security official official told AFP.

Two others hit a US company in the Burjesia oil complex, and a fourth struck the Rumaila oil field, where energy major BP operates, the official added, without being able to identify the perpetrators.

Iraq, long a proxy battleground between the US and Iran, has said it did not want to be dragged into the war engulfing the Middle East. But it has not been spared.

Iraq was drawn into the war from the outset, with strikes blamed on the United States and Israel targeting Iran-backed groups in Iraq which have vowed not to remain neutral and which have claimed attacks on US bases in the country and in the region.

The northern autonomous Kurdistan region, which hosts US troops, has been a main target of attacks.

Explosions sounded on Friday near the airport in Kurdistan's capital Erbil, where drones have been repeatedly intercepted.

Kurdistan's natural resources ministry said Friday that oil production at an oil field operated by US firm HKN Energy had been halted following an attack a day earlier in Dohuk province.

It said the strike was launched from areas in federal Iraq, and urged Baghdad to prevent such attacks on the northern region's civilians, economic infrastructure, and its oil and gas sector.

A security source told AFP the attack was carried out with two drones.

In Erbil, construction worker Abdulmajid Ibrahim, 38, said he fears the "war will last for a long time".

Iraq's Kurdistan also hosts camps and rear-bases operated by several Iranian Kurdish rebel groups, which Iran has struck repeatedly since the start of the war.

Tehran threatened Friday to target "all the facilities" of the region if Kurdish Iranian militants were allowed to enter Iran.

So far, no forces have entered Iran, several sources from the opposition told AFP on Thursday.

On Friday, fresh strikes hit the Kurdish militants, said an official from the exiled Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan.

"Our bases are under attack from the Iranian enemy," the PDKI official told AFP.

Iranian Kurds pin their hopes on the war weakening the Islamic republic and may even go so far as to ally with the United States.

AFP