Iran’s Revolutionary Guards announced early Tuesday 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 the local authorities of the autonomous region.
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At least four explosions were heard on both sides of Erbil. Images relayed on social networks show trajectories of smoke, those of ballistic missiles, near the American Consulate, reports our correspondent in Erbil, Marion Fontenille. 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.
Kurdish authorities report the death of at least four civilians. Among the victims are an influential Kurdish businessman and his entire family. Erbil airport is at a standstill. In a press release, the Kurdistan Security Council accuses Tehran of resorting to “ baseless justifications » for its repeated bombings against the region. “ What happened is a blatant violation of the sovereignty of the region and of Iraq. The federal government and the international community must not remain silent in the face of these crimes », insists the press release.
According to Irna, the attack in Erbil comes in retaliation for the recent assassinations of several commanders of the Revolutionary Guards, but also of leaders of ” the axis of resistance », the name given to Tehran’s allies in its fight against Israel. On January 2, in the southern suburbs of Beirut, a strike attributed to Israel killed Hamas number two, Saleh al-Arouri, and six other officials and executives of the Palestinian Islamist movement. In mid-January, Wissam Tawil, a senior military official of the powerful Lebanese Hezbollah, was killed in southern Lebanon by a strike also attributed to Israel.
In Syria, the Guards Corps announced on its Sepah News website that it had “ identified the gathering places of commanders and key elements linked to recent terrorist operations, particularly the Islamic State » and have them « destroyed by firing a number of ballistic missiles “. He explained that this attack in Syria 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 the crowd gathered in Kermanin southern Iran, during a commemorative ceremony near the tomb of General Qassem Soleimani, the former architect of Iranian military operations in the Middle East, killed in January 2020 by an American strike in Iraq.
(And with AFP)