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Iran defends strikes on Kurd bases
IRANIAN officials claimed the latest strikes on Kurdish opposition bases in northern Iraq were necessary to protect the country’s borders. Kurdish officials condemned the missile and drone attacks as unprovoked aggression. Iran’s strike late on Sunday killed a member of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan, said Mohammed Nazif Qaderi, a senior official in the Kurdish Iranian group exiled in Iraq.
The group said Iranian surfacetosurface missiles and drones hit its bases and adjacent refugee camps in Koya and Jejnikan, as well as a hospital in Koya.
During a visit to Baghdad last week, Esmail Qaani, Iran’s Quds Force commander, threatened Iraq with a ground military operation in the country’s north if the Iraqi army does not fortify the countries’ shared border against Kurdish opposition groups, Iraqi and Kurdish officials said.
Yesterday, Iranian foreign ministry spokesperson Nasser Kanaani told reporters that Iran had acted to “protect its borders and security of its citizens based on its legal rights”.
He alleged that the government in Baghdad and the Erbil- based administration of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region had failed to implement purported commitments to prevent threats against Iran from Iraqi areas.
Kanaani said that in the past month, Iranian and Iraqi officials had discussed the issue in Tehran and Baghdad.
He said Iran demanded that Iraqi Kurdistan should not be a “location for exporting weapons” to Iran by Iraqi- based “separatist” groups.
“Unfortunately the expectations by Iran have not been realised so far,” Kananni added.
The government of the autonomous Kurdish region of Iraq condemned the strikes as a “gross infringement of international law and neighbourly relations.”
Meanwhile, at least three people died and 10 others were injured after suspected Kurdish militants in Syria fired rockets into a border town in Turkey, officials said.
The rockets struck a high school and two houses in the town of Karkamis, in Gaziantep province, the state- run Anadolu Agency said.