2024-01-16 09:06:57
The Iranian Revolutionary Guards announced early Tuesday January 16 that they had launched several salvos of ballistic missiles at targets “terrorists” in Iraq and Syria, killing at least “four civilians” in Iraqi Kurdistan, according to local authorities in the autonomous region.
The strikes carried out by Iran on the night of Monday to Tuesday come in a tense regional context, against a backdrop of war in Gaza between Israel and Palestinian Hamas which raises fears of a regional conflagration between the allies of the two camps.
Spy headquarters attributed to Israel targeted
In Washington, an official denounced “a series of reckless and imprecise strikes”. “No American personnel or installations were targeted”however, specified Adrienne Watson, spokesperson for the National Security Council of the White House.
On the outskirts of Erbil, capital of autonomous Kurdistan in northern Iraq, the Iranian Revolutionary Guards claimed to have targeted and destroyed “a spy headquarters” which they attributed to Israel — just as was targeted “a gathering of anti-Iranian terrorist groups”according to the official IRNA news agency.
The US State Department stressed that the United States was “opposites” to these “irresponsible strikes” Who “undermine the stability of Iraq”.
Furthermore, the Guards Corps announced on its Sepah News website that it had identified in Syria “the gathering places of commanders and key elements linked to recent terrorist operations, particularly the Islamic State” (EI) and have them “destroyed by firing a number of ballistic missiles”.
Attack near the tomb of General Qassem Soleimani
He explained that this attack was carried out in “response to the recent crimes of terrorist groups who have unjustly martyred a number of our dear compatriots in Kerman and Rask”.
On January 3, attackers carried out a suicide attack against a crowd gathered in Kerman, southern Iran, during a memorial ceremony near the tomb of General Ghassem Soleimani, the former architect of military operations Iranians in the Middle East, killed in January 2020 by an American strike in Iraq. The attack, claimed by ISIS, left around 90 dead and many injured.
In Iraqi Kurdistan, at least “four civilians” were killed and six others injured in Iranian missile strikes, authorities of the autonomous region announced in a statement, specifying that some injured were in a ” critical state “. An AFP correspondent in Erbil heard several loud explosions, as the missiles hit an upscale residential area on the outskirts of Erbil, northeast of the Kurdistan capital.
The Kurdistan Security Council accused Tehran of resorting to “baseless justifications” for its repeated bombings against the region. The region’s Prime Minister Masrour Barzani called “the Baghdad government to adopt a firm position against this violation of Iraqi sovereignty”ensuring that he would be in contact with “our partners in the international community to stop these brutal attacks”.
Earlier, the ruling party in Erbil, the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), reported the deaths of civilians, including a real estate tycoon, Peshraw Dizayee, his wife and other members of his family, their home having been affected.
A year ago, Tehran bombed the positions of several armed groups of the Iranian Kurdish opposition, accused in particular of being involved in the protest movement triggered after the death in custody of Mahsa Amini.
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