Iraq recalls ambassador, summons Iran’s chargé d’affaires over strikes in Erbil

Iraq recalled its ambassador from Tehran for consultations and summoned Iran’s chargé d’affaires in Baghdad on Tuesday in protest over Iranian strikes on northern Iraq that killed several civilians overnight, the Iraqi Foreign Ministry said.

The Iranian attack was “a blatant violation of the sovereignty of the Republic of Iraq, strongly contradicts the principles of good neighbourliness and international law, and threatens the security of the region,” it said in a statement.

Iran fired missiles late Monday at what it said were Israeli “spy headquarters” in an upscale neighbourhood near the sprawling US Consulate compound in Erbil, the seat of Iraq’s northern semi-autonomous Kurdish region, and at targets linked to the extremist Islamic State group in northern Syria.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard said in a statement on Tuesday that it launched four Kheibar missiles at Daesh positions in Idlib in Syria and 11 precision ballistic missiles at the Kurdish region in northern Iraq, where it said it hit a center of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence agency.

Iran’s strikes came after Daesh group claimed responsibility earlier this month for two suicide bombings targeting a commemoration for an Iranian general slain in a 2020 US drone strike. The attack in Kerman killed at least 84 people and wounded 284 others at the ceremony honoring Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani.

Last month, Iran accused Israel of killing a high-ranking Iranian general, Seyed Razi Mousavi, in an airstrike on a Damascus neighborhood.

It was unclear whether the strikes in Syria had, in fact, hit any targets associated with the Islamic State group.

Mounir Al Mustafa, deputy director of the civil defense in northwest Syria, also known as the White Helmets, said one of the strikes in Idlib targeted a medical clinic that was no longer operating in the village of Talteta in northwest Idlib province. Two civilians suffered minor injuries, he said.

A few hundred demonstrators gathered in Irbil on Tuesday to protest the attacks.