Iran attacks Kurds, earns EU sanction
Tehran is using force against Kurdish opposition members
ARBIL, Iraq (AFP) — Iran launched cross-border missile and drone strikes Monday against Kurdish opposition groups based in northern Iraq, where local authorities reported one death and eight wounded.
An Iranian military source confirmed that “Iran has carried out attacks with drones and missiles targeting the headquarters of terrorist parties in the northern region of Iraq,” Iran’s Fars news agency reported.
Tariq al-Haidari, mayor of Koysanjaq in Kurdish Iraq, told AFP that “five Iranian missiles targeted a building used by the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran.”
“One person is dead and eight wounded,” the health ministry in Iraqi Kurdistan said.
Other strikes hit elsewhere in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region, authorities there said, without immediately providing a toll for those attacks.
Meanwhile, the European Union was to add around 30 senior Iranian officials and government bodies to its sanctions blacklist Monday, in response to a hardening crackdown on protests rocking the country.
Foreign ministers from the bloc were meeting in Brussels, Belgium and expected to sign off on the move — shortly after Tehran issued its first death sentences over the demonstrations.
Last month the bloc hit Iran’s “morality” police, revolutionary guard and IT minister with asset freezes and visa bans, citing attempts to crush protests over the death of Mahsi Amini.
Tehran has warned of a “proportionate and firm” response to the EU over the expanded sanctions.
The bloc has already also slapped asset freezes and visa bans on Iran’s drone maker and three top military officials over the supply of unmanned aerial vehicles to Russia that struck civilian energy infrastructure in Ukraine.