ERBIL, Iraq —
Iran again launched deadly
missile and drone strikes, overnight into Monday, against Iranian Kurdish
opposition groups based in Iraq whom it accuses of stoking unrest inside the
Islamic republic.
اضافة اعلان
One Kurdish peshmerga fighter was reported killed in
mountainous northern Iraq, where two of the groups said their bases had been
targeted in the latest such barrage of aerial attacks in recent months.
Iran has been shaken by more than two months of
protests sparked by the death of Kurdish-Iranian woman
Mahsa Amini, 22, after
her arrest for allegedly breaching the strict dress code for women.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has
repeatedly struck Kurdish dissident groups based in Iraq, which it labels
“separatist anti-Iranian terrorist groups”.
One of the
groups, the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI), said it was hit with
missiles and suicide drones in Koya and Jejnikan, near Arbil, the capital of
Iraqi Kurdistan.
“A member of the peshmerga was killed in an Iranian
strike” in the Koya area, said party official Ali Boudaghi.
“These indiscriminate attacks are occurring at a
time when the terrorist regime of Iran is unable to stop the ongoing
demonstrations in (Iranian) Kurdistan,” said the PDKI, the oldest Kurdish party
in Iran.
The Iranian Kurdish nationalist group Komala said its
headquarters was also targeted.
“We’ve been carefully prepared for these types of
attacks and have no losses for the moment,” it said on Twitter.
The government in autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan
condemned the strikes.
Late Monday, Iraq’s federal government issued its
own denunciation which “strongly” condemned the Iranian strikes.
The foreign ministry said Iraq should neither be “a
battleground or area for settling scores”, nor a base for “harming neighboring
countries”.
Iran’s Guards charged that the Kurdish groups are
backed by “the global arrogance”, code for arch foe the US.
It said it had targeted their “headquarters and
conspiracy centers” in Iraq and that “the terrorists were struck and suffered
heavy casualties”.
The US Central Command, (centcom) which oversees US
military operations in the Middle East, condemned the “illegal” Iranian
strikes.
“Such indiscriminate and illegal attacks ... jeopardize the hard-fought security and
stability of Iraq and the Middle East,” said CENTCOM chief Gen Michael Kurilla.
The UN mission in Iraq said in a statement that
“repeated attacks, violating Iraqi sovereignty, must cease”.
In Tehran, Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Nasser
Kanani stressed that the Islamic republic “desires that there be no threat to
Iran’s security from Iraqi territory”.
He said that during two meetings last month, “we
insisted with the Iraqi authorities and the
Kurdistan region on the fact that
this region should not be a place of transit of material and weapons to be used
in the unrest.”
“So far, those expectations have not been met.”
Asked if Iranian forces would enter Iraqi territory
to fight the armed groups, Kanani stressed that Iraq must move against them and
secure the common border.
He expressed hope that Iraq’s government would deploy
“border guards at the common border, so that Iran does not have to take other
deterrent measures to repel threats”.
Iraqi Kurdistan has since the 1980s hosted several
Iranian Kurdish opposition groups which have in the past waged an armed
insurrection against Tehran.
In recent years their activities have declined, but
the new wave of protests in Iran has again stoked tensions.
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