| ...and possibly the thing they shot at was not a figment of fevered imaginations. |
Air defense weapons fired on the drone and forced its retreat, according to a tweet from the PMF, known in Arabic as Hashd al-Shaabi, early on Monday evening.
"Hashd al-Shaabi’s Operations Command in Nineveh has dealt with an unidentified drone over one of its headquarters and forced it to withdraw amid intensive fire cover," the PMF’s Media Directorate tweeted.
The drone was observed flying over the headquarters for over 20 minutes by the PMF’s Nineveh Operations Command intelligence service, according to the Media Directorate’s website.
"After establishing [...] that the drone was not Iraqi, and that the Joint Operations Command [coordinating body of Iraq’s security forces] was not aware of it, it was dealt with instantly with ’anti-aircraft weapons’," the directorate said.
This is the second targeting of an unidentified drone by the PMF in the vicinity of one of its headquarters. Last Thursday, the group claimed to have targeted a drone flying over the headquarters of its Brigade 12 in the Baghdad Belt (areas encircling Baghdad) using its air defenses.
At least one PMF member was killed in a strike on Sunday by an unidentified drone in Anbar province’s al-Qaim district near the Syrian border.
PMF weapons depots have also been rocked by explosions believed to have been caused by
...KABOOM!...
s.
Speculation over the perpetrators of the attacks has run rife, though fingers are currently being pointed at Israel.