Missile strikes from east hit Erbil in Iraqi Kurdistan

A dozen ballistic missiles were fired into the capital of Iraq's northern Kurdish region Erbil in the early hours of today, according to Kurdish and Iraqi officials.

The missiles "were launched from across Iraq's eastern border" and "targeted areas around the new US consulate compound" in Erbil, said Lawk Ghafuri, the head of Kurdistan's foreign media office after the incident. "The attack did not result in human casualties, only material damages," he said.

Ghafuri added that "none of the missiles" actually hit the US consulate, which is currently under construction, but "areas around the compound" were. The strikes "resulted in the injury of two people," Erbil's governor Omid Khoshnow said.

Masrour Barzani, the prime minister of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) "strongly" condemned what he labelled a "terrorist attack," but stopped short of assigning blame. His counterpart in Baghdad, Mustafa Kadhimi, said the security forces of the federal Iraqi government are helping to investigate who was behind the attack.

But numerous mentions by Kurdish officials of the attack originating from the east suggests a belief that the missiles may have been launched from Iran — the source of several similar attacks on northern Iraq in recent years

One of the more notable recent ballistic strikes came on two bases that house US troops — one in Erbil, the other in western Iraq — in early January 2020 in retaliation for the targeted killing by the US of senior Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani on 2 January.

Hiwa Afandi, a deputy minister in the Kurdistan Regional Government, said today that Erbil International Airport, where US military forces are currently stationed, had not been a target in this latest strike.

Tehran has yet to issue any official comment on today's attacks. But Iranian state media has been reporting that several of the locations targeted in the attack were bases that were "unofficially run by Israel."

"The places that were targeted were not public, they were not urban locations, they were not Iraqi bases, but specific locations in Erbil. According to our informed sources in Erbil, these locations were under the supervision of the Zionist regime," Iran's state-owned IRNA reported, referring to the Israeli government.

The attack comes amid heightened tensions between Iran and US as the negotiations in Vienna over a return to the 2015 nuclear deal were paused last week over Russian demands that the sanctions currently being imposed on Moscow over the fighting in Ukraine would not affect its ability to co-operate with Tehran once the agreement is reinstated.

An Israeli airstrike in Syria near the capital Damascus on 7 March killed two members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Iran's state media reported last week, for which the IRGC had vowed revenge.

By Nader Itayim