Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps shells bases of 'anti-Iran groups' in northern Iraq amid unrest

By Syed Zafar Mehdi

TEHRAN, Iran (AA) – Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said Saturday it had carried out an artillery attack on terrorist group headquarters in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq.

In a statement on Saturday, the IRGC said its ground forces targeted the positions of Komala, an armed rebel group, accusing it of smuggling weapons into Iran.

The guard said the attack was carried out after the "arrival of terrorist teams and a large cache of weapons" in northeast Iran to "sow unrest.”

It comes amid nationwide protests in the wake of the death of a 22-year-old Iranian woman in police custody last week.

Mahsa Amini, an ethnic Kurd, belonged to a section of Iran with a large Kurdish population where protests have grown louder over the past week.

The IRGC statement said the attacks would continue, calling on locals to refrain from approaching the "headquarters and centers of anti-Iranian terrorist groups.”

Media reports in Iraq’s Kurdish Regional Government confirmed heavy artillery shelling on the outskirts of the capital province of Erbil, near the villages of Barbazin and Saqr.

There were no immediate reports of casualties or damage to property.

Iran has long accused rebel groups based in northern Iraq of carrying out destabilizing activities in the border region, where the majority of Iranian Kurds live.

In July, Iran's Intelligence Minister Esmaeil Khatib said Komala and the PJAK – a group linked to the terrorist PKK, which has taken the lives of tens of thousands in Iran’s neighbor Türkiye – were supported by its arch-foe Israel.