U.S. soldiers are seen at the site where an Iranian missile hit at Ain al-Asad air base in Anbar province, Iraq, January 13, 2020. /Reuters Photo

U.S. soldiers are seen at the site where an Iranian missile hit at Ain al-Asad air base in Anbar province, Iraq, January 13, 2020. /Reuters Photo

A total of five mortar shells struck on Friday a military base housing U.S. forces in Iraq's northern province of Nineveh, the Iraqi military said.

The attack took place in the night when the shells landed on al-Qayyara air base in south of the provincial capital city of Mosul, the media office affiliated with the Iraqi Joint Operations Command said in a statement.

The were no human casualties in the attack, the statement said. A security source in Mosul told Xinhua that Katyusha rockets landed at the perimeter of al-Qayyara air base without causing casualties.

The attack came a week after thousands of demonstrators took to the streets in Baghdad upon the request of the Iraqi prominent Shiite leader Moqtada al-Sadr, in which he called for a scheduled withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq through peaceful means.

Sadr, a powerful political broker who played a major role in facilitating the formation of the Abdul al-Mahdi government, regards any foreign meddling in Iraq as cause for instability.