ERBIL, Iraq (AP) — Iran introduced new cross-border missile and drone movements Monday night against Kurdish opposition teams in Iraq, killing at least one fighter from the teams it accuses of stoking a wave of protests.
The Islamic Republic has been rocked by more than two months of protests sparked by the death of 22-year-old Kurdish-Iranian woman Mahsa Amini after she was arrested for allegedly violating the strict dress code for women.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has attacked Kurdish dissident teams founded in Iraq’s mountainous north, which it calls “anti-Iranian separatist terrorist teams. “
The guards accused the Kurdish teams of being subsidized through “global arrogance,” code of the archenemy of the United States and its allies, and said they had targeted their “headquarters and conspiracy centers. “
The IRGC said it had attacked the Kurdish camps of Jezhnikan and Zargiz and the city of Koysinjaq, adding that “the terrorists were attacked and suffered heavy losses. “
In northern Iraq, the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (KDPI) said Iran had attacked it with missiles and suicide drones in Koya and Jezhnikan, near Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan.
A party official, Ali Boudaghi, told AFP that “a member of Peshmerga was killed in an Iranian attack” in the Koya region.
“These indiscriminate attacks take place at a time when the Iranian terrorist regime cannot prevent the ongoing protests in (Iranian) Kurdistan,” said the KDPI, Iran’s oldest Kurdish party.
Iranian Kurdish nationalist organization Komala said it also attacked.
“Our headquarters attacked through the Islamic regime tonight,” he said on Twitter. “We’ve been consciously prepared for those kinds of attacks and we have no casualties right now. “
The president of the autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan condemned the measures in a statement: “The repeated violations that undermine the sovereignty of Iraq and the Kurdistan Region are unjustifiable.
In Tehran, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani said the Islamic Republic “wishes there to be no risk to Iran’s security from Iraqi territory. “
U. S. Central Command, which oversees U. S. military operations. A U. S. military official in the Middle East, condemned “illegal” Iranian moves near Irbil.
“Such indiscriminate and unlawful attacks endanger civilians, violate Iraqi sovereignty and undermine the hard-fought security and stability of Iraq and the Middle East,” CENTCOM leader Gen. Michael Kurilla said in a statement.
On Monday morning, Iraqi state news firm INA reported on the attacks, referring to “Iranian missile and drone strikes” against “three Iranian opposition parties in (Iraqi) Kurdistan. “
The new Iranian moves come less than a week after cross-border attacks through Tehran that killed at least one person, and after last September’s attacks that killed more than a dozen people.
Tehran accuses Kurdish-Iranian opposition teams in northern Iraq of stoking the wave of “unrest” in the country, where women-led protests erupted across the country following Amini’s death.
Iraqi Kurdistan is home to several Iranian Kurdish opposition teams abroad that have waged armed opposition to Tehran.
In years, its activities have declined, but the wave of protests in Iran has again inflamed tensions.
Hamzeh Hadad, a visiting tank member of the European Council on Foreign Relations, described the latest Iranian moves as a “failure” through the Iraqi and Kurdish federal governments.
“Whatever Tehran’s objective is to attack Iraqi Kurdistan, it is a failure of Baghdad and Erbil to allow their territory to be targeted by foreigners,” Hadad tweeted.
The latest Iranian strikes come a day after Turkey carried out airstrikes against banned Kurdish militants in Iraqi Kurdistan and northern Syria.
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