ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - At least four civilians were killed and six others were wounded as a result of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) attack on Erbil on Monday evening, the Kurdistan Region Security Council announced hours later, calling the strikes “a blatant violation” of Iraq and the Region’s sovereignty.
The IRGC on early Tuesday claimed responsibility for a massive ballistic missile attack on the Kurdistan Region’s capital of Erbil, claiming to have hit “spy headquarters” of anti-Iran groups.
“The IRGC said the attack targeted several positions of Iranian opposition groups. Unfortunately, they always use baseless excuses to attack Erbil,” the security council said in a statement in the early hours of Tuesday, adding that the Kurdish capital “has never been a source of threat to any party.”
The statement stressed the federal government and the international community “must not remain silent about this crime.”
Peshraw Dizayee, a well-known Kurdish businessman and the owner of Falcon Group which runs major projects such as Empire World, succumbed to his injuries around 1:00 am on Tuesday after his house was struck by a missile, former deputy speaker of the Kurdistan Region parliament Hemin Hawrami confirmed on X.
In a later statement on early Tuesday, the IRGC claimed that "three Mossad bases" were targeted in the Erbil bombardments, despite the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) having categorically rejected the presence of Israeli intelligence in the Kurdistan Region.
Kurdistan Region President Nechirvan Barzani last week said that the Region will not become a “source of threat” to Iran, amid threats by the IRGC to launch attacks on Erbil for allegedly housing secret Mossad bases.
In late December, KRG spokesperson Peshawa Hawramani reiterated that there are no Israeli bases in the Kurdistan Region, a day after a pro-Iran militia claimed it had struck an Israeli base in Erbil with a drone.
In March of 2022, Iran attacked Erbil with twelve ballistic missiles, striking the residence of a well-known Kurdish businessman. The IRGC claimed responsibility for targeting “the strategic center of the Zionist conspiracy and evil by point-to-point missile.”
