By Ahmed Rasheed BAGHDAD (Reuters) -Drones struck oilfields in Iraqi Kurdistan on Thursday, with officials pointing to Iran-backed militias as the likely source of attacks this week that have slashed the region's oil output by more than half.

“The drone attacks in Kurdish energy sites grew out of a sequence of drone attacks since 19 June on Kurdish security forces, where Iraqi militias were claiming that Kurdistan was supporting Israeli and US strikes on Iran,” Michael Knights, a senior fellow at The Washington Institute, told MEE.

Fresh drone strikes have struck three of Iraq's oil fields on Wednesday, in what has become a string of UAV and missile attacks across the Middle Eastern country's Kurdistan region. The Iraqi Kurdistan counter-terrorism forces said that within 15 minutes at 6 am local time (5 am CEST) on Wednesday,