(Erbil) Iran launched a new series of missile and drone strikes on Monday against Iranian Kurdish opposition groups based in neighboring Iraqi Kurdistan, killing at least one person and injuring eight, according to local officials.
Posted at 12:02 p.m.
The Iranian government accuses these groups, which have long been in its sights, of stoking unrest in Iran, which has been facing demonstrations since the death in custody on September 16 of the young Iranian Kurdish Mahsa Amini, arrested three days earlier by morality police in Tehran.
Iran has confirmed strikes against “terrorist groups” based in the autonomous Kurdistan region of Iraq (north), bordering Iranian territory.
“Five Iranian missiles targeted a building of the Democratic Party of Kurdistan of Iran (PDKI),” said Tariq al-Haidari, mayor of Koysanjaq, a town east of Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan.
“There is one dead and eight injured. These are Iranian Kurds, ”detailed the autonomous region’s Ministry of Health.
Videos circulating on social media showed plumes of black smoke rising into the sky after the strikes.
At the same time, “four drone strikes” targeted bases of the Iranian Communist Party and the Iranian Kurdish nationalist group Komala in the Zrgoiz region, said Atta Seqzi, a leader of Komala, joined by AFP.
According to him, the militants were “warned of the imminence of the strikes” and evacuated the installations. “There is no death or injury.”
At the end of the day, the Iraqi Foreign Ministry “condemned in the strongest terms” these strikes, which “encroach on Iraqi sovereignty”, assuring that it would take “high-level diplomatic measures”, without however detailing them. .
“Not Silent”
In Iran, an Iranian military source confirmed attacks with “missiles and drones” against “terrorist party headquarters” in Iraq.
The people targeted were “terrorists who have actively participated in the riots of the last two months, in particular by causing fires against banks and administrative buildings in several localities” in Iranian Kurdistan, said General Mohammad-Taghi Osanlou, commander of a base of the Revolutionary Guards, Iran’s ideological army, on public television.
Iranian authorities call protests against Mahsa Amini’s death “riots”.
Iran has stepped up its attacks on these Iranian Kurdish opposition groups since the protests began.
At the end of September, at least 14 people were killed and 58 injured, “mostly civilians”, in Iranian bombardments, according to the counter-terrorist forces of Iraqi Kurdistan.
Iran, said Monday the spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Tehran, will not remain “silent in the face of threats from separatist terrorist groups” in Iraqi Kurdistan.
“Violation of sovereignty”
The UN mission in Iraq has “condemned these new drone and missile attacks in Kurdistan which violate the sovereignty of Iraq”.
Iraqi Kurdistan, whose authorities maintain very tense relations with the central government in Baghdad, is also regularly the scene of Turkish bombardments.
In the areas bordering Turkey, Ankara is targeting the rear bases of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), a Turkish Kurdish armed group that Turkey and its Western allies consider “terrorist”.
The authorities in Baghdad are up against these campaigns led by Turkish and Iranian neighbors on their soil. But no Iraqi retaliatory measure is generally taken.
In addition, Tehran was targeted Monday by new Western sanctions for its repression of the demonstrations generated by the death of Mahsa Amini.
The United Kingdom has thus sanctioned about twenty “Iranian leaders responsible for heinous violations of human rights”.
These measures were taken in coordination with the European Union, which also approved a new set of sanctions, targeting in particular Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi and the public channel Press TV, accused of having broadcast “forced confessions of detainees.
In Geneva, an emergency session of the UN Human Rights Council is to be held on November 24 on the situation in Iran, during which the opening of an international investigation into the repression which has left more than 326 dead, according to the Oslo-based NGO Iran Human Rights (IHR).