IRAN warned yesterday that Israel’s assault on Gaza will “inevitably” spark a wider regional war in messages its foreign minister sent to his Qatari counterpart.

The message came just after US bases in Iraq suffered further attacks from militias launching drones and explosive devices, bringing the US’s estimate of the number of attacks on its forces in the Middle East since Israel attacked Gaza to 41.

Drones were shot down aimed at the Ain al-Asad airbase west of Baghdad and al-Harir airbase in Erbil on Thursday night, while three US soldiers suffered minor injuries when their convoy struck an improvised explosive device near Mosul dam.

The US has so far retaliated to Iraqi militias only with air raids on their allies in neighbouring Syria, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken visiting Baghdad on Monday to urge Iraqi Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani to convince coalition allies linked to the militias to rein them in.

The US says the Iraqi and Syrian militias are all Iranian proxies, though Tehran denies any involvement in the recent attacks.

Former US diplomat David Schenker has warned that a strike on a US base in Iraq that draws the United States into a wider war is “a very realistic concern,” with Washington worried that direct retaliation might prompt the collapse of the shaky Iraqi coalition and a massive escalation of militias’ war against its 2,500 troops in the country — whom the Iraqi parliament voted to expel nearly four years ago, a vote ignored both by Iraqi governments and the US.