BAGHDAD, Feb. 16 (Xinhua) -- Four Katyusha rockets fired overnight on the Green Zone in central Baghdad, three of them landed inside the heavily fortified zone, which houses the U.S. embassy, the Iraqi military said on Sunday.
The incident took place late on Saturday night when unknown militants fired the rockets, but one of them landed on a paramilitary Hashd Shaabi headquarters near the Police Academy in Palestine Street in eastern Baghdad, the media office affiliated with the Iraqi Joint Operations Command (JOC) said in a statement.
The rocket on the Police Academy caused material casualties, the statement said.
However, an Interior Ministry source anonymously told Xinhua that three rockets landed on the Green Zone at about 3:00 a.m. local time (0000 GMT), pointing out that two of the rockets did not explode.
The heavily fortified Green Zone has been frequently targeted by insurgents' mortar and rocket attacks. The roughly 10 square km zone is located on the west bank of the Tigris River, which bisects the Iraqi capital.
On Jan. 5, the Iraqi parliament passed a resolution requiring the government to end the presence of foreign forces in Iraq, just two days after a U.S. drone strike on 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.
Over 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.
