U.S. condemns Iranian aerial attack on Kurdistan
FILE – Armed members of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP), take part in routine military exercise in Koya, 100 km east of Irbil, the capital of the autonomous Kurdish region of northern Iraq, Oct. 22, 2017. An aerial attack by Iran Saturday is said to have targeted a meeting in Koya of the Iranian opposition group.
Baghdad (IraqiNews.com) – The U.S. condemned on Tuesday an aerial attack by Iranian forces on the Iraqi Kurdistan region, which took place on Saturday.
“Spoke with Prime Minister @PMBarzani of Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government earlier today & condemned Iran’s recent rocket attacks into the Kurdistan region,” U.S. Vice President Mike Pence tweeted.
Pence termed the Iranian rocket attack “as an effort to threaten and destabilize its (Iraq) closest neighbor.”
Iraq slammed yesterday the artillery shelling on Kurdistan’s Koy Sanjaq district, stressing that it will not allow any country to violate its own sovereignty.
“The Iraqi Ministry of Foreign Affairs stresses its rejection of the artillery shelling that targeted Koy Sanjaq district in Erbil on Saturday, leaving scores dead and wounded,” Sputnik quoted the ministry’s spokesman Ahmed Mahjoob as saying.
“The ministry strongly refuses the breaching of Iraqi sovereignty without prior coordination with Iraqi military authorities to avoid the fall of civilian victims,” added the spokesman.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards claimed responsibility for the attack.
“In a successful operation, the Guards’ aerospace unit, along with the army’s drone unit … targeted a criminal group’s meeting and a terrorist training center with seven short-range surface-to-surface missiles,” the Revolutionary Guards said in a statement carried by the semi-official news agency Fars.
The statement said the attack was prompted by a decision of “group leaders to ignore serious warnings by officials of the Kurdistan Regional Government about Iran’s determination to dismantle their bases … and the need for an end to terrorist and aggressive actions against Iran.”