{"id":14487,"date":"2018-09-09T21:24:26","date_gmt":"2018-09-09T21:24:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=14487"},"modified":"2018-09-09T21:24:26","modified_gmt":"2018-09-09T21:24:26","slug":"iranian-guards-claims-missile-attack-on-kurdish-rebels-in-iraq","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/?p=14487","title":{"rendered":"Iranian Guards claims missile attack on Kurdish rebels in Iraq"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) confirmed on Sunday that it had launched deadly missile attacks against Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq a day earlier.<\/p>\n

Rockets struck<\/a>\u00a0the headquarters of two Iranian Kurdish opposition parties in\u00a0Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region with reports saying at least 11 people were killed and 50 others wounded.<\/p>\n

The missiles\u00a0<\/span>hit<\/a>\u00a0the headquarters of the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI) and the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI) in the town of Koya, 300km north of Iraq’s capital, Baghdad.<\/span><\/p>\n

It was the first such attack since 1996.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

“The terrorists’ headquarters … was successfully struck by seven surface-to-surface rockets on Saturday by the missile department of the Guards’ aerospace force,” the IRGC said on its Sepah News website on Sunday.<\/p>\n

The statement added its drone division was also involved in the attack.<\/p>\n

According to Soran Louri, spokesman for the KDPI, which is blacklisted as a “terrorist” group by Tehran, the death toll in the rare cross-border attack was 15, he told AFP news agency.<\/p>\n

About 30 others were wounded, according to local medical sources.<\/p>\n

‘Terrorist teams’<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Iranian state television showed images of the missiles being launched and drone footage of the impact.<\/p>\n

“The punishment of transgressors was planned following the recent months’ wicked acts by terrorists from the Kurdistan realm against the Islamic Republic’s borders,” the IRGC statement said.<\/p>\n

It cited incursions by numerous “terrorist teams” into Iran’s West Azarbaijan, Kurdistan and Kermanshah provinces bordering Iraq<\/a>.<\/p>\n

KDPI recently clashed with Revolutionary Guards forces in the towns of Marivan and Kamyaran in Iran’s own Kurdistan region.<\/p>\n

The Kurdish group was holding a meeting at the time of the missile attacks, and the party’s secretary-general and his predecessor were among the wounded, according to one of its officials.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

The headquarters is in Koysinjaq, 60km east of Erbil, capital of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region.<\/p>\n

Bilal Wahab from The Washington Institute told Al Jazeera the attack was retaliation for the groups’ increased “activism and militancy” inside Iranian territory.<\/p>\n

“Some of these Iranian Kurdish opposition groups have been trying to approach Washington, DC, and find a foothold in the increased American effort in curbing Iranian influence in the region. So this is very specific to Iran’s enemies,” Wahab said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Territorial violation<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Iraq’s foreign ministry denounced the Iranian missile strike.<\/p>\n

“Iraq protects the security of its neighbours and does not allow its territory to be used to threaten these countries,” spokesman Ahmed Mahjoub said in a statement.<\/p>\n

“But it categorically rejects the violation of its territorial sovereignty by strikes against certain targets on its territory with previous coordination.”<\/p>\n

KDPI is Iran’s oldest Kurdish movement and has seen several of its leaders assassinated by Tehran in the past.<\/p>\n

Commenting on the events from the Iraqi capital Baghdad, Al Jazeera’s Rob Matheson said the timing of the attack was significant as it comes a couple of days after the Iranian consulate in Basra was torched<\/a> during violent protests over lack of public services and jobs.<\/p>\n

“There is nothing to link these two events but there is a lot of speculation in Iraq that the latest missile attack in Kurdistan is Iran showing that it can strike back and that it can strike back powerfully.”<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\n SOURCE: Al Jazeera and news agencies<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) confirmed on Sunday that it had launched deadly missile attacks against Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq a day earlier. Rockets struck\u00a0the headquarters of two Iranian Kurdish opposition parties in\u00a0Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region with reports saying at least 11 people were killed and 50 others wounded. The missiles\u00a0hit\u00a0the headquarters of the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":14488,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-middle_east_news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14487"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14487\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14488"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/qatar-news.org\/qatarnewsEn\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}