Iran announced late Monday that it had conducted attacks against a “spy headquarters and gathering of anti-Iranian terrorist groups” in Irbil, Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region, just after missiles hit an upmarket suburb near the US embassy.
The Kurdish regional government’s security council claimed in a statement that the attacks killed four people and injured six others.
Peshraw Dizayi, a prominent local businessman with a portfolio that included real estate and security services companies, was killed in one of the strikes along with members of his family, according to a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, by former Iraqi member of parliament Mashan al-Jabouri, who said that one of the missiles had fallen on Dizayi’s “palace, next to my house, which is under construction on the road to the Salah al-Din resort.”
Additional political personalities from the area also verified Dizayi’s passing.
Soon after, a statement from Iran’s Revolutionary Guards on state media said it had struck “terrorist operations” including Islamic State targets in Syria “and destroyed them by firing a number of ballistic missiles.” According to a different report, it targeted an Israeli spy agency’s headquarters in the Kurdish area of Iraq called Mossad.
This month, the extremist organisation Islamic State took credit for two suicide attacks that were intended to honour an Iranian general killed in a US drone strike in 2020. At least 84 people were killed and 284 injured in the incident that happened in Kerman during a ceremony honouring Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani.
Iran claimed last month that Israel had killed Seyed Razi Mousavi, a senior Iranian commander, in an airstrike on a neighbourhood in Damascus.
Irbil was the target of “several” ballistic missiles, according to an Iraqi security officer, who did not provide any more information. An official with an Iranian-backed Iraqi militia said 10 missiles fell in the area near the US consulate. He said the missiles were launched by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. Both officials spoke on condition of anonymity.
A US defense official who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss details that had not been made public said the US tracked the missiles, which hit in northern Iraq and northern Syria, and no US facilities were struck or damaged in the attacks. The official said initial indications were that the strike were “reckless and imprecise.”
In 2022, Iran claimed responsibility for a missile barrage that struck in the same area near the sprawling US consulate complex in Irbil, saying it was retaliation for an Israeli strike in Syria that killed two members of its Revolutionary Guard.
The strikes come at a time of heightened tensions in the region and fears of a wider spillover of the ongoing war in Gaza.
Since the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war on Oct. 7, Iranian-backed militias in Iraq have launched near-daily drone attacks on bases housing US forces in Iraq and Syria, which the groups have said was in retaliation for Washington’s support of Israel, and in an attempt to force US troops to leave the region.
Via Firstpost World Latest News https://ift.tt/eOGfwUm
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