Israel’s use of Iraqi airspace during the Iran strike has drawn criticism from the UN.

Israel’s use of Iraqi airspace during the Iran strike has drawn criticism from the UN.
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Iraq has condemned Israel’s use of its airspace to attack neighboring Iran in a protest letter sent to United Nations chief Antonio Guterres and the UN Security Council, Baghdad said Monday.

A statement from government spokesman Bassim Alawadi said the letter condemns “the Zionist entity’s blatant violation of Iraq’s airspace and sovereignty by using Iraqi airspace to carry out an attack on the Islamic Republic of Iran on October 26.”

Alawadi said the Iraqi foreign ministry would also bring up “this violation” in talks with the United States, Israel’s close ally and top arms provider.

Israel on Saturday launched air strikes on military sites in Iran, risking further regional escalation more than a year into the Gaza war and a month into the Israel-Hezbollah war in Lebanon.

The Israeli raid was in retaliation to an Iranian missile attack on October 1, itself retaliation for the killing of Iran-backed militant leaders and an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander.

The Iranian military said that some Israeli aircraft had fired a “small number of long-range missiles… from a distance,” inside the US-patrolled airspace of Iraq.

Baghdad has close ties with Tehran but also a strategic partnership with Washington, which has troops in Iraq as part of an international anti-terrorism coalition.

While the Iraqi government has sought to avoid being dragged into the escalating regional conflict, some pro-Iran factions have launched attacks on US forces in the region and claimed responsibility for drones sent to Israel.

One Tehran-aligned group, the influential Kata’ib Hezbollah, condemned on Sunday the Israeli use of Iraqi airspace to attack Iran as a “dangerous precedent.”

It accused the United States of being complicit in the Israeli attack, warning both of a response to this “aggression.”

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