Iran on Wednesday launched cross-border missile and drone strikes that killed 13 people in Iraq’s Kurdistan region, after accusing Kurdish armed groups based there of stoking a wave of unrest that has rocked the Islamic republic.
The Sept. 16 death of Kurdish Iranian woman Mahsa Amini, 22, while in the custody of Iran’s morality police, has sparked a major wave of protests and a crackdown that has left dozens of demonstrators dead.
The Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has accused the Iraq-based Kurdish groups of “attacking and infiltrating Iran ... to sow insecurity and riots, and spread unrest.”
Photo: AFP
After earlier cross-border attacks that caused no casualties, Wednesday’s assault killed “13 people — including a pregnant woman — and wounded 58, most of them civilians, including children,” Iraqi Kurdistan counterterrorism services said in a statement.
“More than 70” strikes were carried out using “ballistic missiles” and armed drones, it added.
Iranian state television said the guards had “targeted several headquarters of separatist terrorists in northern Iraq with precision missiles and destructive drones.”
An Agence France-Presse correspondent reported smoke billowing from locations hit in Zargwez, with ambulances racing to the scene and residents fleeing. Several exiled left-wing Iranian Kurdish parties maintain offices in the area east of the regional capital of Erbil.
“The area where we are has been hit by 10 drone strikes,” said Atta Nasser, an official at the exiled Iranian group Komala.
“The headquarters of the Kurdistan Freedom Party has been hit by Iranian strikes,” Hussein Yazdan, an official at the party, said about the site in the Sherawa region south of Erbil.
The Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran said its bases and headquarters in Koysinjaq, east of Erbil, were also struck by “missiles and drones”.
“These cowardly attacks are occurring at a time when the terrorist regime of Iran is unable to crack down on ongoing protests inside and silence the Kurdish and Iranian peoples’ civil resistance,” it wrote on Twitter.
Iraqi Kurdish television channel K24 said three of its journalists were injured.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees in Iraq said the attack impacted “Iranian refugee settlements.”
The UN refugee agency said on Twitter that Iranian refugees were said to be among the casualties, adding that the assault “reportedly impacted a primary school where refugee students were present.”
The US Central Command (CENTCOM) said in a statement that “US forces brought down an Iranian Mojer-6” drone headed towards Arbil “as it appeared as a threat to CENTCOM forces in the area.”
In Baghdad, the Iraqi government called in the Iranian ambassador to protest the deadly strikes, while the UN mission in Iraq deplored the attack, saying “rocket diplomacy is a reckless act with devastating consequences.”
US Department of State spokesman Ned Price said Washington “strongly condemns” Iran’s “brazen attacks” and warned against further strikes.
IRAN PROTESTS
Amini died in Tehran three days after being arrested for allegedly breaching Iran’s strict dress code for women that demands they wear hijab headscarves and modest clothes.
Her death sparked Iran’s biggest protests in almost three years and a crackdown that has killed at least 76 people, Oslo-based group Iran Human Rights said.
Iran’s semi-official Fars news agency reported that “around 60” people had been killed.
Protests have rocked especially Kurdish areas in western Iran that share strong connections with Kurdish communities in Iraq.
Many Iranian Kurds cross the border into Iraq to find work, due to a biting economic crisis in Iran driven by US sanctions.
Iranian General Abbas Nilforoushan on Tuesday said about Iraqi Kurdistan that “the establishment of a base by the enemies of the Islamic Revolution in this region is not acceptable.”
“For some time now, counterrevolutionary elements have been attacking and infiltrating Iran from the northwest of the country to sow insecurity and riots, and spread unrest,” he said.
He added that several of “these anti-revolutionary elements were arrested during some riots in the northwest [of Iran], so we had to defend ourselves, react and bomb the surroundings of the border strip.”
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