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Missiles and drones were fired by Iran at Iraqi Kurdistan. According to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, the attacks were intended to target those it classified as “terrorists in the region”, after assuring that “Iranian Kurdish dissidents” have been part of the mobilizations that are spreading throughout much of the country. However, Iraq condemned the events, assuring that it will take diplomatic measures to stop Iranian incursions into its territory.
Smoke clouds part of the panorama of the Iraqi Kurdistan region. It is one of the pieces of evidence of Iran’s attack with missiles and drones that, according to the Revolutionary Guard, sought to achieve “military objectives” in the north of its neighboring country.
The attack claimed the lives of at least nine people and injured 32 others as the strikes hit near Erbil and Suleimania in eastern Iraq’s Kurdish territory, Health Minister Saman Barazanchi said in a statement.
“Some of the injured are in critical condition and the death toll could rise,” the minister added.
Iran has justified the attack on the accusation that armed Iranian Kurdish dissidents have participated in the protests that have spread over much of its territory after the murder of the young Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini.
The Revolutionary Guard, Iran’s elite military and security force, assured that the operation will continue “until the threat is effectively repelled, the bases of terrorist groups are dismantled and the authorities of the Kurdish region assume their obligations and responsibilities.” .
However, the Iraqi perspective is different: it is a violation of its territorial sovereignty. That is why the spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Iraq assured that they would take measures to stop the attacks. Among them, the summons of the Iranian ambassador to inform him about Iraq’s objection to the attacks on its territory.
In addition, according to the mayor of the Iraqi Kurdish city of Koye, two people were killed, including a pregnant woman, and 12 people were injured, some of whom were taken to Erbil hospital in critical condition.
Kurdistan reacts to Iranian attacks
While Iran has assured that the attacks will continue, the Iraqi Kurds have indicated that at least 10 Iranian Kurdish bases near Solemania were targets of the bombing.
For his part, Soran Nuri, a member of the Iranian Kurdistan Democratic Party, a leftist armed opposition force banned in Iran, noted that Iran’s strikes targeted Koya, some 65 kilometers east of Erbil.
According to Nuri, the attack targeted a military camp but also homes and offices.
Likewise, a military source assured Efe that “positions of Iranian Kurdish parties, including the Kurdish Democratic Party and the Party for the Liberation of Kurdistan, were the target of a bombardment with drones and missiles.”
Attacks against the Kurds, the largest ethnic minority with no state of their own, are not new. Its population, estimated at 30 million, is divided mainly between Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria.
In Iraq, the Kurds represent between 15% and 20% of the population.
The United States condemns the attack and the UN classifies it as “reckless”
An unjustified violation of the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Iraq, as described by the US State Department.
At the same time, he assured that the threat of continuing the bombing is unacceptable. “We further condemn the Iranian government’s comments threatening additional attacks on Iraq,” the institution said in a statement.
For its part, the UN had ruled on the tensions in Iran stating that “rocket diplomacy is a reckless act with devastating consequences.”
An attack amid social unrest over the death of Mahsa Amini
In the Iranian streets, the claims and repudiation of the murder of Mahsa Amini, in police custody, have not stopped.
On September 13, Amini, a 22-year-old woman born in the Kurdish city of Saez, was arrested by the Iranian morality police for wearing “inadequate clothing”. Three days later she died in a hospital in Tehran, the capital.
Since then, the protests have not stopped, even despite strong repression by the Iranian security forces. According to the country’s media, 41 people, including members of the police, have died. But several NGOs have assured that the number could be higher.
In the midst of the tense panorama and the claims that do not stop, the Iranian president, Ebrahim Raisi, said this Wednesday in a televised interview that he would not accept “chaos” in the midst of the protests that arose as a result of Amini’s death and defended the actions of the police before the demonstrators.
Reuters, AP and EFE
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