Iran’s Revolutionary Guard bombarded opposition bases in the semiautonomous Kurdistan region of Iraq on Tuesday, the latest in a string of attacks against Kurdish groups that Iran blames for fomenting some of the protests that have gripped the country for almost three weeks.
The attacks were reported by Iranian state media, which did not provide casualty figures.
The head of the Iranian Kurdish opposition party Komalah said Iranian forces had launched an artillery assault on one of its bases in Iraqi Kurdistan. Abdullah Mohtadi, the director of the Komalah Party of Iranian Kurdistan, said two people were injured in the shelling of the main base about 10 miles southwest of the city of Sulaymaniyah.
The violence was the latest deadly attack waged by Tehran against militant Iranian Kurdish opposition groups, drawing condemnation from around the world as it battles to curb the demonstrations that have convulsed Iran for the past 18 days in the wake of the death of Mahsa Amini, 22, in police custody.
At least 17 people have been killed and more than 50 injured since the start of the bombardments, according to Iraqi Kurdish news media. The United Nations said that Iranian attacks last week hit Iranian refugee settlements across the border in Iraqi Kurdistan. Local officials said at least nine civilians were killed and dozens more injured.
Iran has accused the groups of being responsible for violence in towns along its northwestern border with Iraq. In response, it has unleashed a wave of bombardments against several Iranian opposition paramilitary groups that maintain bases near the border. Those groups have accused the Revolutionary Guard of trying to divert attention from the protests.
In the attack Tuesday, Iranian forces used drones and artillery to target Iranian Kurdish positions on Halgurd mountain and in the Sidakan and Bernezin districts, according to the Tasnim news agency, which is affiliated with the Revolutionary Guard. The opposition positions are in the Kurdistan region of Iraq.
An Iraqi-Kurdish commander in charge of border areas, Gen. Bahram Arif Yassin, said Iranian forces had massed troops on the border but had not tried crossing over into the Iraqi Kurdistan region.
U.S. Central Command said Wednesday that U.S. forces had shot down an Iranian drone heading toward Irbil, the capital of the Kurdistan region of Iraq, where the U.S. military maintains a base.
Iran’s armed forces commander in chief, Maj. Gen. Mohammad Hossein Bagheri, warned U.S. forces not to interfere.
“If Americans carry out any action against Iranian drones, the armed forces of the Islamic Republic of Iran will respond to their hostile measure,” Bagheri said Friday, according to the Tasmin news agency, adding that Tehran has “complete and precise” knowledge of U.S. bases in Harir, Irbil and Duhok.
He emphasized that his army was engaged in a “harsh” military offensive to disarm “separatist terrorists.”
The Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran, one of the opposition groups that has been targeted in the attacks, insists that it is not seeking a separate Kurdish state and that it is fighting for “a free and democratic” Iran.
Since last week, the strikes have displaced more than 700 families, many of them Iranian refugees who were sheltering in the city of Koya, according to the Kurdish news website Rudaw, citing the city’s mayor. Hundreds were also forced to flee Saturday after renewed shelling affected the village of Choman, near the Iraq-Iran border, according to Rudaw.
The government of the Kurdistan region in Iraq has repeatedly denounced the strikes as “repetitive violations of the sovereignty of the Kurdistan region.”
The violence in the Kurdistan region has also drawn widespread condemnation from Iraqi officials and global leaders. Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Ministry in a tweet stated its “total rejection of all attacks that threaten the security and stability of Iraq.”
Also on Tuesday, France said it was working with European Union partners on new sanctions against Iran over its crackdown on the protests that were sparked by Amini’s death.
Catherine Colonna, the French foreign minister, told lawmakers in Paris that France was working with other countries to target Iranian officials with asset freezes or travel bans. “Such measures can have an impact on the Iranian regime’s decision makers,” Colonna said.
It was not immediately clear who in Iran would be targeted by the new sanctions or what exactly they would entail. Josep Borrell, the EU’s top foreign policy official, told the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France, on Tuesday that he would raise the issue at a meeting of EU foreign affairs ministers later this month.
For almost two decades, Iran has wielded influence over neighboring Iraq through religious and economic ties and the backing of militias. In a statement last week, the United Nations denounced the deadly border strikes as the latest example of Iraq’s role as the “region’s backyard where neighbors routinely, and with impunity, violate its sovereignty.”
Amini was a member of the Iranian Kurdish community, many of whom live in the northwest of the country, where 23 Kurdish protesters have been killed and more than 2,000 have been arrested, according to Hengaw, a Kurdish rights group.
Ethnic Kurds have a separate language and culture and are one of several minority groups chafing under the Islamic government in Tehran. Across the region, thousands of Kurds have also taken to the streets to express their solidarity with the protesters in Iran and to voice rage at the long-standing discrimination Iranian Kurds have suffered.
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