Iraq 'strongly' condemns Turkish-Iranian strikes in Kurdistan
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Iraq on Monday condemned Iranian and Turkish attacks on its northern Kurdistan region, the state news agency INA reported, citing a foreign ministry statement.
"The repeated attacks carried out by Iranian and Turkish forces with missiles and drones on the Kurdistan region are a violation of Iraq's sovereignty," the statement added.
Iran targeted the headquarters of what it called "dissident groups" in Iraqi Kurdistan in the early hours of Monday, while Turkish warplanes had already carried out strikes in Syria and Iraq on Sunday, destroying targets linked to the outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).
(AFP)
Iranian Guards again strike Kurdish groups in Iraq, one dead
Iran launched new cross-border missile and drone strikes overnight to Monday against Kurdish opposition groups in Iraq, killing at least one fighter from the groups it accuses of stoking a wave of protests.
Iran intensifies deadly crackdown in Kurdish regions: rights groups
Stuart WILLIAMS
Mon, November 21, 2022
Iranian security forces on Monday intensified a crackdown in western Iran's Kurdish-populated regions that killed a dozen people over 24 hours, directly shooting at protesters and using heavy weapons, rights groups said.
The Kurdish-populated provinces of western and northwestern Iran have been hubs of protest since the September death in custody of Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini, 22, who had been arrested by morality police in Tehran.
There have been particularly intense anti-regime demonstrations in several towns in the last few days, rights groups say, largely sparked by the funerals of people said to have been killed by the security forces in previous protests.
The Norway-based Hengaw rights group said Iranian forces had shelled overnight Sunday-Monday the cities of Piranshahr, Marivan and Javanroud, posting videos with the sound of live gunfire and what appeared to be the thud of heavy weaponry.
In one harrowing video Hengaw said was from Javanroud, locals were seen struggling to remove a body from the street under a hail of gunfire.
It said 13 people had been killed in the region by the security forces over the previous 24 hours, including seven in Javanroud, four in Piranshahr and two more in other locations.
Among six people killed by gunfire from the security forces on Sunday was 16-year-old Karwan Ghader Shokri, Hengaw said. Another man was killed when security forces fired on crowds as the teenager's body was being brought to the mosque, it added.
AFP could not immediately verify the toll.
Internet monitor NetBlocks tweeted on Monday that there was "a major disruption" to internet services during the new protests, with "mobile internet cut off for many users".
Hengaw said that amid "intense confrontations" between protesters and security forces in Javanroud there was now a shortage of blood for the wounded in its hospitals.
The New York-based Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) described what was happening in Javanroud as a "massacre", with "incessant gunshot streams, images of bloody people being carried to safety."
Ramifications of the protests were felt in Qatar where Iran's national team played its first match, against England. Iranian players did not sing their national anthem, and instead stood stony-faced, in apparent support for the demonstrations back home.
- 'Intensifying violence' -
The latest violence came alongside continued concern over the situation in Mahabad, where rights groups said security forces had sent reinforcements the day before to press a crackdown.
"Greatly concerned that Iranian authorities are reportedly escalating violence against protesters, particularly in the city of Mahabad," US Secretary of State Antony Blinken wrote on Twitter.
Hengaw posted footage it said was of heavily-armed security forces in vehicles headed from the city of Sanandaj towards Mahabad and the nearby town of Bukan.
The Norway-based Iran Human Rights (IHR) group also posted footage it said showed security forces using live fire against protesters in Piranshahr.
It also showed the distraught mother of Shokri, the teen killed on Sunday, prostrating herself on his corpse as it was taken for burial.
"Mother, don't cry. We will take revenge," the mourners chanted in Kurdish, the rights group said.
IHR's director Mahmood Amiry-Moghaddam posted a video showing wounded protesters lying in the street in Javanroud, surrounded by the constant sound of gunfire.
"They are intensifying the violence against defenceless citizens," he wrote on Twitter.
People also took to the streets in Kermanshah, a Kurdish-populated provincial capital, chanting "death to (supreme leader Ayatollah Ali) Khamenei", another video posted by IHR said.
Iranian security forces have killed at least 378 people since the protests began, an IHR toll on Saturday said.
The demonstrations sparked by Amini's death have become the most serious challenge to the Iranian regime since the 1979 revolution.
Analysts have noted that violence by the security forces has simply triggered more protests, with large crowds turning out for funerals and 40-day "chehelom" mourning ceremonies.
Kurds make up one of Iran's most important non-Persian ethnic minority groups and generally adhere to Sunni Islam rather than the Shiism dominant in the country.
In the southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchistan on Monday, a policeman was killed and another wounded by "criminals" firing from a car in a village of Zahedan, provincial police chief General Mohammad Ghanbari told Fars news agency.
Iran also renewed cross-border missile and drone strikes overnight into Monday in neighbouring Iraq against Kurdish opposition groups it accuses of stoking the protests.
The latest Iranian strikes also came a day after Turkey carried out air raids against outlawed Kurdish militants in Iraqi Kurdistan and northern Syria.
sjw/it
Kurds condemn ‘aggression’ as Iran defends missile attack on Iraq
ERBIL, Iraq -
Iran said Monday that its latest strikes on Kurdish opposition bases in northern Iraq were necessary to protect the country’s borders, while Kurdish officials condemned the missile and drone attacks as unprovoked aggression.
Iran’s strike late 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 surface-to-surface missiles and drones hit its bases and adjacent refugee camps in Koya and Jejnikan. The group also asserted that the strikes had hit a hospital in Koya.
The Iranian strikes come in the wake of a visit to Baghdad last week by Iran’s Quds Force commander Esmail Ghaani.
During the visit, Ghaani 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.
Some Kurdish groups have been engaged in a low-intensity conflict with Tehran since the 1979 Iranian Islamic Revolution, with many members seeking political exile in neighbouring Iraq where they have established bases.
Iran alleges that these groups are inciting anti-government protests in Iran and smuggling weapons into the country, which Kurdish groups have denied. Iran has not provided evidence to back up the claims.
On Monday, Iranian foreign ministry spokesman 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 honour 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 had demanded that Iraqi Kurdistan should not be a “location for exporting weapons” to Iran by Iraqi-based the “separatist” groups.
“Unfortunately the expectations by Iran have not been realised so far,” said Kananni.
The government of the autonomous Kurdish region of Iraq condemned the strikes as a “gross infringement of international law and neighbourly relations.”
Qaderi said the Kurdish opposition groups in Iraq support the protests in Iran, which he described as a reaction to “the policies of this regime” which he said oppresses its people. He denied that his group has sent fighters or weapons to Iran.
He said that his group had moved troops away from the border to avoid giving Iran an “excuse” for further attacks. He called on the international community to prevent further aggression by Iran.
Iran has periodically launched air strikes against the Kurdish groups’ bases in Iraq in the past.
The US condemned the latest Iranian strikes. General Michael E Kurilla, who heads US Central Command, said in a statement: “Such indiscriminate and illegal attacks place civilians at risk, violate Iraqi sovereignty, and jeopardise the hard-fought security and stability of Iraq and the Middle East.”
Sunday’s Iranian strikes in northern Iraq come a day after Turkey launched deadly air strikes over northern regions of Syria and Iraq, targeting Kurdish groups that Ankara holds responsible for last week’s bomb attack in Istanbul.
Kurdish militants fire rockets into Turkey as tensions flare up
ANKARA -
Suspected Kurdish militants in Syria fired rockets across the border into Turkey on Monday, killing at least three people and wounding ten others, officials said. The attack followed deadly air strikes by Turkey on suspected militants targets in Syria and Iraq.
The rockets struck a high school and two houses in the town of Karkamis, in Gaziantep province, as well as a truck near a Turkish-Syria border gate, the state-run Anadolu Agency reported.
Interior Minister Suleyman Soylu said the dead include a teacher and a child. One of the rockets landed on the grounds of a high school but there were no fatalities there.
A soldier and seven police officers were wounded overnight in separate shelling by suspected Kurdish militants that targeted a border area in nearby Kilis, Soylu said.
Turkey would respond to the attacks “in the strongest way possible,” the minister said.
The Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces opened fire toward Karkamis from its positions near the Syrian border town of Kobane, according to Rami Abdurrahman, who heads the Britain-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an opposition war monitor. He added that Turkish troops retaliated by firing toward SDF positions on the Syrian side of the border but there was no word on casualties yet.
While Kurdish-led forces in Syria have not commented nor claimed responsibility for the attacks, the Syrian Democratic Forces in a statement Monday vowed to respond to Turkish air strikes “effectively and efficiently at the right time and place.”
The rocket attacks came days after Turkey launched deadly air strikes over northern regions of Syria and Iraq, targeting Kurdish groups that Ankara holds responsible for a November 13 bomb attack in Istanbul.
The bomb rocked a bustling avenue in the heart of Istanbul on November 13, killing six people and wounding over 80 others.
Turkish authorities blamed the attack on the PKK and its Syrian affiliate the YPG. The Kurdish militant groups have, however, denied involvement.
The Turkish warplanes attacked bases of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK and the Syrian People’s Protection Units, or YPG on Saturday and Sunday.
Turkish officials claimed that a total of 89 targets were destroyed and a “large number” of what it designated “terrorists” was killed in strikes.
The Observatory said 35 people were killed in air strikes over the weekend including 18 Kurdish fighters, 16 Syrian government soldiers and a journalist for a local media outlet.
On Monday, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan signalled Turkey was also contemplating a ground incursion against the militant groups, saying the operation would not be “limited to an air campaign.” Turkey’s defence ministry and military would hold discussions on the number of ground troops that would be required, he added.
“We will hold our consultations and then we will take steps accordingly,” Turkish media quoted Erdogan saying.
Turkey has launched three major incursions into northern Syria since 2016 and already controls some territories in the north.
Ankara and Washington both consider the PKK a terror group, but disagree on the status of the YPG.
Under the banner of the Syrian Democratic Forces, the YPG has been allied with the US in the fight against the Islamic State group in Syria.
The PKK has fought an armed insurgency in Turkey since 1984. The conflict has killed tens of thousands of people since then.
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