- Four people killed and six injured after rockets struck near the US consulate in Erbil
- The missiles were fired by Iran and hit a suspected Israeli “spy headquarters,” Iran said
Iran late Monday fired missiles at what it claimed was an Israeli “spy headquarters” near the US consulate in the northern Iraqi city of Erbil, and at targets linked to the Islamic State extremist group in northern Syria.
Four civilians were killed and six were injured after rockets hit an upscale area near the US consulate in Erbil, seat of Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region, the Kurdish regional government’s security council said.
Iranian Revolutionary Guard said in a statement that it had hit a headquarters of the Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, in the Kurdish region of Iraq.
Another statement said it had fired a number of ballistic missiles at and destroyed “terrorist operations”, including Islamic State targets, in Syria.
Police and soldiers are seen before dawn on Tuesday morning in Erbil, northern Iraq
Video from Rudaw TV shows smoke rising from a building hit by a strike in Erbil, Iraq, in the early hours of Tuesday
The attacks come at a time of heightened tensions in the region and fears of a wider spillover from the ongoing war in Gaza.
Since the outbreak of the War between Israel and Hamas on October 7Iran-backed militias in Iraq have launched drone strikes on bases housing US troops in Iraq and Syria almost daily, in what the groups say was retaliation for Washington’s support for Israel, and in an effort to force US troops out of the region to leave. .
The United States strongly condemns Iran’s “reckless missile attacks” in Erbil, State Department spokesman Matthew Miller said.
He said the attacks “undermine the stability of Iraq.”
A U.S. defense official told AP that the U.S. tracked the missiles, which hit northern Iraq and northern Syria, and that no U.S. facilities were hit or damaged in the strikes.
The official said initial indications were that the strikes were “reckless and inaccurate.”
An Iraqi security official said Erbil had been targeted by “several” ballistic missiles.
An official from an Iranian-backed Iraqi militia said 10 rockets fell near the US consulate.
He said the missiles were launched by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards.
Smoke rises over Erbil early Tuesday morning
An ambulance is photographed arriving at the scene of Monday night’s strikes
Peshraw Dizayi, a prominent local businessman with a portfolio that included real estate and security companies, was killed along with members of his family during one of the strikes in Erbil, according to a post on X by Mashan al-Jabouri, a former Iraqi member of parliament.
Al-Jabouri said one of the rockets fell on Dizayi’s “palace, next to my house, which is under construction on the road to Salah al-Din resort.”
Other regional political figures also confirmed Dizayi’s death.
In 2022, Iran claimed responsibility for one rocket barrage that struck in the same area near the sprawling U.S. consulate complex in Erbil, saying it was in retaliation for an Israeli attack in Syria that killed two Revolutionary Guard members.
The Iranian attack in northern Syria came late in the day on Monday Islamic State The group earlier this month claimed responsibility for two suicide bombings targeting the anniversary of an Iranian general who was killed in a US drone strike in 2020.
The attack in Kerman killed at least 84 people and injured another 284 during a ceremony honoring Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani.
Last month, Iran accused Israel of killing a senior Iranian general, Seyed Razi Mousavi, in an airstrike on a Damascus neighborhood.