The incident comes two years after a US drone strike killed Iran’s revered General Soleimani.
Two armed drones were shot down as they approached an Iraqi military base housing US troops near Baghdad’s international airport. No one was injured in the incident.
A U.S.-led international military coalition official stationed there said the base’s defense system struck “two drones… The plane was shot down without incident.”
“This was a dangerous attack on a civilian airport,” coalition officials said in a brief statement on Monday.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack.
Footage showed debris from two drones destroyed in the attack, with clearly visible inscriptions on the wing of one drone that read “Soleimani’s revenge”.
The attack came as Iran and its allies in Iraq marked the second anniversary of the killing of Iran’s top General Qassem Soleimani who was killed in a drone strike ordered by Donald Trump near Baghdad airport.
Soleimani, the head of iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps foreign unit, was killed along with Iraqi militia leader Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis on Jan. 3, 2020.
Hundreds of supporters of Iranian-backed militia groups gathered on Sunday at Baghdad airport to mark the anniversary of Soleimani’s death and chanted anti-American slogans.
The Hash – a coalition of former paramilitary groups now integrated into Iraq’s state security apparatus – held a candlelight vigil on Sunday at the airport for the two people killed.
The U.S. said at the time that Soleimani was planning immediate action against U.S. personnel in Iraq, a country that has long been torn between competing demands from key allies Washington and Tehran.
Five days after his assassination, Iran fired missiles at an air base in Iraq housing U.S. troops and another near Erbil in the north of the country.
Since then, dozens of rockets and roadside bombs have targeted U.S. security, military and diplomatic sites across Iraq.
On December 9, the U.S.-led coalition said it had completed its combat mission in Iraq and that about 2,500 of its troops would switch to purely training and advisory roles.