(PresidentialHill.com)- Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) took responsibility for the missile attack that hit the northern city of Erbil, the capital of Iraq’s Kurdistan region on Sunday.
In Sunday’s attack, dozens of ballistic missiles fired from Iran hit residential areas in Erbil, including an area not far from the US consulate.
According to US officials, no Americans were hurt in the attack, nor were any US facilities hit. Kurdish authorities reported no deaths and only one civilian injured.
This is the first time Iran fired missiles near US facilities in Iraq since the attack on Ain al-Asad airbase in western Iraq in January 2020 after the US killed IRGC commander Qassem Soliemani in an airstrike near the Baghdad airport.
In a statement after the strike, the IRGC said the missiles were targeting so-called “secret Israeli bases” in Erbil and implied the strike was retaliation for the alleged deaths of two IRGC officers in an Israeli airstrike in Syria last Monday.
However, the Kurdish regional government said the missiles hit only civilian residential areas and no sites belonging to foreign countries.
In its statement, the IRGC warned “the criminal Zionist regime” that any actions would be met with “harsh, decisive, and destructive responses.”
In a statement on Sunday, Iraqi Prime Minister Mustafa al-Kadhimi denounced Iran and called the missile attack an act of terror. Prime Minister Kadhimi confirmed that Iraq was coordinating its response with the Prime Minister of Kurdistan’s regional government, Masrour Barzani.
Both Kadhimi and Barzani inspected the missile attack site on Monday.
Meanwhile, on Monday, Tehran said it would not tolerate Iraq being used as a so-called “center for sabotage, conspiracy, and sending terrorist groups to Iran.” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh said Tehran expects the Iraqi central government to “end this situation once and for all.”
A video purportedly showing Sunday’s missile attack was posted on Twitter:
#erbil #explosion pic.twitter.com/bMffdC9b84
— Rawchi (@Rawchihasan) March 12, 2022
