Baghdad
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The United States on Tuesday carried out a strike in Iraq in self-defense, a US official told Reuters.

The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said the strike was carried out because of a threat to US-led coalition forces.

The confirmation from the US official came after blasts were heard inside a base south of Baghdad used by Iraq's Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF).

Iraqi police and medical sources told Reuters that four members of the group were killed and four others were wounded.

The initial death toll was one, but two others who were critically injured in the blasts later died and another body was retrieved from the location of the blasts, hospital sources and a local government official said.

The US attack came days after multiple rockets were launched at Iraq's Ain al-Asad airbase, which houses US-led forces.

No damage or casualties were reported in last Thursday’s attack. Two US officials said the base itself had not been struck in the attack.

The Ain al-Asad base also came under attack by two armed drones two weeks ago, but that attack was the first one against US forces in Iraq since early February, when Iranian-backed groups in Iraq announced they would stop their attacks against US troops.

That announcement came two days after a drone attack in Jordan killed three US service members and wounded dozens of others.

Before stopping their attacks in February, the pro-Iranian militias in Iraq had upped the volume of their attacks, and launched dozens of attacks on bases in Iraq and Syria which host US troops.

The US retaliated by striking Iranian-linked sites in both Iraq and Syria.