Kurdistan
Kurdish fighters inspect damage after an Iranian cross-border attack in Zirgwez, Sulaimani on September 28, 2022. File photo: AFP
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Iranian security forces continued their missile and drone attacks on Kurdish opposition groups in the Kurdistan Region in northern Iraq for the second consecutive day despite a two-week ceasefire between the US and Iran.
The headquarters of the Komala Party of Iranian Kurdistan, in Sulaimani’s Zirgwez village came under a renewed Iranian missile attack in the early hours of Wednesday morning, a party official said, without causing any casualties.
The missile attack came one day after several drones hit two other camps of Kurdish opposition groups, wounding two peshmerga fighters and killing another.
The attack occurred just after midnight on Tuesday targeting the leadership department of the Komala party according to Afshin Dadvand, media coordinator for the group. "Fortunately there were no casualties.”
The renewed attacks on Kurdish opposition groups come after the Iran consulate in Erbil released a statement on the day of the ceasefire calling on Baghdad and Erbil to expel these groups for collaborating with the enemies of Iran.
Dadvand added that the headquarters came under "four to five" other attacks since the war
began in late February, when the US and Israel launched a large-scale offensive against Iran, prompting Tehran to retaliate with hundreds of strikes on US facilities and Iranian Kurdish opposition groups in the Kurdistan Region.
Despite the announcement of a fragile two-week ceasefire between the United States and Iran, Tehran has recently continued to target the Kurdistan Region with drone and rocket attacks.
On Tuesday evening, a young female member of the Komala Toilers of Kurdistan, another Kurdish opposition group, died from wounds she sustained in a drone attack earlier on Tuesday that targeted the group in Sulaimani province.
Azad Salawati, a senior security official from the group, told Rudaw that “one of the people injured in Tuesday's drone attack, a young woman, has succumbed to her wounds.”
Komala later issued a statement saying that the slain Peshmerga, Ghazal Mawlan, “was killed in a drone attack launched from the Islamic Republic [of Iran],” noting that she was a native of the city of Mahabad, in the Kurdish-majority West Azerbaijan province in western Iran.
Earlier on Tuesday, two camps belonging to Kurdish opposition groups in the Kurdistan Region came under drone attacks, resulting in several injuries, party sources told Rudaw English.
In addition to the attack on the Komala position, a source from the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI), speaking to Rudaw English on condition of anonymity, reported another drone strike on the group’s Azadi camp in Koya city, located around 70 kilometers east of Erbil, adding that “no casualties resulted from the attack.”
The Kurdistan Region is home to several Iranian Kurdish opposition parties, which Tehran labels as “terrorists” or “separatists” and repeatedly carries out cross-border drone, missile, and artillery strikes targeting their positions.
Komala’s Zirgwez base was one of those evacuated as part of a security pact between Iraq, Iran and the Kurdistan Region last year. Only a few fighters remain at the site to guard the party’s belongings.
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