Iran was accused of killing seven and wounding 28 on Wednesday in cross-border strikes against Kurdish factions in Iraq, who lamented an ongoing crackdown on protests in the Islamic Republic.
Strikes blamed on Iran have repeatedly hit districts of autonomous Iraqi Kurdistan in recent days, as Tehran stepped up its crackdown on protests over the death of Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini in morality police custody.
The regional health ministry in Arbil, capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, said in a statement that four people were killed and 14 injured in the recent attacks in the Koysinjaq region and three people were killed and 14 injured in Sherawa.
“Among the casualties are civilians,” including one dead, a senior autonomous Kurdistan official told AFP.
“These cowardly attacks come at a time when Iran’s terror regime is unable to quell the ongoing internal protests and silence the civil resistance of the Kurdish and Iranian people,” the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran tweeted (KDPI).
Amini, 22, died in Tehran on September 16, three days after she was arrested for allegedly violating Iran’s strict dress code for women.
Her death sparked protests across Iran and a crackdown that has killed at least 76 people in the Islamic Republic, according to the Oslo-based group Iran Human Rights.
The air strikes on the autonomous region of Iraqi Kurdistan on Wednesday prompted the German government in Iraq to summon the Iranian ambassador.
“Missile diplomacy is a reckless act with devastating consequences,” the UN mission in Iraq tweeted. “These attacks must be stopped immediately.”
– “Missiles and Drones” –
The KDPI said it was one of the groups targeted in Wednesday’s strikes.
Iran has hit its bases and headquarters with “missiles and drones” in Koysinjaq, east of Erbil, he said in a statement.
In Tehran, state television said the “Revolutionary Guards had attacked the headquarters of several separatist terrorist groups in northern Iraq with missiles and precision-guided attack drones.”
More strikes on Wednesday destroyed buildings around Zargev, some 15 kilometers (10 miles) from Souleimaniyeh, where several exiled left-wing Iranian Kurdish parties have offices.
An AFP correspondent in Zargev saw smoke rising from places affected by these strikes and ambulances were dispatched to the scene.
Residents fled the area while the slightly wounded were treated by a group, the correspondent added.
“The area we are in has been hit by 10 drone strikes,” Atta Nasser, an official from Komala, one of the exiled Kurdish left-wing parties, told AFP. Iran is behind the strikes, he said.
The Sherawa region south of Erbil was also attacked.
“The headquarters of the Kurdistan Freedom Party was hit by Iranian attacks,” Hussein Yazdan, an official of that party, told AFP.
The semi-official Iranian news agency Fars put the number of people killed in protests in Iran at “around 60”, including several members of the security forces.
Kurdish communities in western Iran have strong ties to the Kurdish-inhabited areas of Iraq.
Many are crossing the border into Iraq to find work due to a biting economic crisis in Iran, largely caused by US sanctions.
