ISIS claims responsibility for car bomb outside US consulate in Iraq
The Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) is claiming responsibility for a Friday car bombing that killed three people outside the U.S. consulate in Erbil, Iraq, according to media reports.
“A vehicle-borne improvised explosive device was detonated directly outside an entry point on the perimeter of the U.S. consulate in Erbil today,” acting State Department spokeswoman Marie Harf said during a briefing.
No U.S. personnel were hurt in the blast, she said.
{mosads}An Associated Press reporter on-site said the blast went off outside a cafe next to the building, setting several nearby cars on fire.
Erbil is the capital of Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan region. Its native security forces, known as the Peshmerga, have provided crucial ground support to the U.S.-led campaign against ISIS, which still controls large swaths of territory inside Iraq.
Harf did not directly say whether U.S. officials had any intelligence warning of the strike.
“I think that Iraq remains a dangerous place — many parts of it,” she told reporters. “So I’m not going to get into specifics, but we know that the security environment there is quite a challenging one and obviously take a number of security precautions when it comes to our people and our facilities.”
Harf also said the bombing wouldn’t dramatically impact how business is done at the diplomatic outpost or how employees there operate.
“I’m not sure why an explosive device outside the consulate would change travel patterns, given this happened outside the consulate,” she said. But there’s already a high level of security at the consulate, at our embassy in Baghdad. Obviously, this is something we take very serious in Iraq.”
ISIS also claimed responsibility for two car bombings in the Baghdad that killed at least 27 people on Friday, Reuters reported.
Harf condemned the attack, saying in a statement, “We extend our deepest condolences to the families of those who were injured and killed.”
– Updated at 5:24 p.m.