An Iranian bombing campaign targeted Iraq’s northern Kurdish region on September 28, killing least 13 people and wounding 58 others, Iraq’s state news agency said.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corp (IRGC) fired on targets in Iraq’s northern Kurdish regional capital of Irbil and the eastern Iraqi city of Sulaymaniyah, the Iranian state news agency IRNA reported.
The Iranian bombing took place amid protests that erupted nearly two weeks ago in Iran over the death of Mahsa Amini, 22, who died on September 16 three days after being detained in Tehran by the morality police for allegedly breaching Iran’s strict rules on head scarves.
The wave of protests and a crackdown that followed have left scores of demonstrators dead over the past 12 nights.
The IRGC has accused Iraq-based Kurdish groups of “attacking and infiltrating Iran to sow insecurity and riots and spread unrest.”
IRNA said the IRGC targeted bases of a separatist group in the north of Iraq with “precision missiles” and “suicide drones.”
The attacks targeted the political offices of Kurdish parties as well as the Iranian Kurdish refugee camp.
U.S. Central Command said it downed an Iranian drone while it was on its way to Irbil, adding that the drone appeared to pose a threat to U.S. personnel in the region.
“No U.S. forces were wounded or killed as a result of the strikes and there is no damage to U.S. equipment,” it said in a statement.
A senior member of Komala, an exiled Iranian Kurdish opposition party, told Reuters that several of their offices were struck.
Tariq Haidari, the mayor of the Iraqi Kurdish city of Koye, told Reuters that two people, including a pregnant woman, were killed and 12 wounded. Some of the wounded were rushed in critical condition to a hospital in Irbil, he said.
The United Nations refugee agency in Iraq said on Twitter that the attack “caused damage to the Iranian refugee camps in Koye,” and Iranian refugees were among the casualties.