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A drone struck the US Victoria Base in the Iraqi capital Baghdad, security sources said, with no group immediately claiming responsibility. The attack is the latest blow in a relentless month-long campaign by Iran-aligned militias that has subjected the installation to near-constant fire since the outbreak of the broader regional conflict on Feb. 28.
The assaults on the base, situated alongside Baghdad International Airport, began almost immediately after the US and Israeli air offensive against Iran. On March 2, just two days after the strikes on Tehran, the Iraqi Shia militia Saraya Awliya al-Dam, operating under the umbrella of the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, sent two drones at the compound. One was intercepted by US air defense systems; the other penetrated the perimeter and detonated inside.
The group framed the operation explicitly as an act of religious and political retribution for the killing of then-Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, issuing a statement saying the strike was carried out in fulfillment of its fighters' duty in support of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Within days, Iraqi forces intercepted another drone attempting to strike the base overnight on March 5, with footage later showing a downed drone in the al-Bu'aitha neighborhood of Baghdad. The same militia network simultaneously launched drone and missile barrages on US positions in Erbil in northern Iraq, signaling the scope of what was already becoming a coordinated, multi-front campaign.
The pace sharply accelerated in the second week of the conflict. Between March 8 and 10, air defenses intercepted multiple waves of drones targeting Victoria Base across consecutive days, while separately, more drones targeted logistical support areas used by US-led coalition forces around the airport complex.
On March 10, one drone from a six-strong swarm broke through defenses at the Baghdad Diplomatic Support Center, a large logistics hub for American diplomats located near the base, striking the facility and prompting personnel to shelter in place, according to a security official and an internal US government alert reviewed by the Washington Post. No casualties were immediately reported.
Strikes further escalated the following week. On March 14, drones breached the base perimeter in what security analysts described as a qualitative shift in attacking groups' ability to overcome American defenses.
On the evening of March 17, two more booby-trapped drones targeted the base, with defense systems intercepting both at the perimeter. Sirens were heard inside the compound during the assault, an Iraqi Interior Ministry source told Xinhua. That same evening, a parallel three-drone attack targeted the US Embassy in Baghdad's Green Zone, with one penetrating the compound and sparking a fire.
On March 21, fires broke out across part of the installation following another strike. The next day, a makeshift multiple rocket launcher was reportedly used to fire four Katyusha rockets from western Baghdad toward the facility, according to an Iraqi security source cited by Al Arabiya, underscoring how attacking groups were diversifying their methods alongside drone operations.
The single most significant strike came around March 25, when footage released by the Islamic Resistance in Iraq showed a low-cost fiber-optic FPV drone, the kind of first-person-view kamikaze aircraft made famous in the Ukraine conflict, destroying a UH-60M Black Hawk helicopter and an AN/MPQ-64 Sentinel air defense radar system inside the base.
The strike was independently verified by the regional fact-checking outlet Misbar through geolocation analysis of video landmarks. Regional security sources confirmed multiple explosions and fires. The Islamic Resistance claimed at least eight separate rocket and drone attacks on Victoria Base in the days surrounding this incident, and announced 21 total operations targeting US positions across Iraq and the region within a single 24-hour window.
By late March, a fresh wave of FPV drone strikes prompted a partial evacuation of the facility, with transport aircraft moving to extract valuable assets from the compound, according to the outlet JFeed. Shafaq News, citing a security source, reported that one of the most recent attacks was the sixth strike on the facility within just a few days. A combined drone and missile assault was reported on or around March 29.
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