Explosion near US-coalition base in Erbil

An explosion was heard Sunday near Erbil airport in northern Iraq's Kurdistan region, where troops from the US-led anti-jihadist coalition remain stationed.

The cause of the blast, accompanied by gray smoke, was not immediately clear. 

According to Kurdish media, however, US forces had carried out the controlled destruction of ordnance in the area. Iraqi Kurdish counterterrorism forces said the explosion resulted from "military training and security activities" and posed no danger to residents.

The incident comes as anti-jihadist forces are in the final stages of withdrawing from Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region. 

They had already pulled out of other bases across Iraq in January and are now deployed only at Erbil International Airport. Their mission is set to formally end on September 30, under a 2024 agreement between Baghdad and Washington. Coalition forces had also withdrawn from neighboring Syria earlier this year.

The coalition was first deployed to Iraq and Syria in 2014 to fight the Islamic State group, which had seized vast swaths of territory in both countries and carried out massacres and other atrocities. The group was defeated in Iraq in 2017 and in Syria in 2019.