Iran claims responsibility for strikes near US consulate in northern Iraq

Iran has claimed responsibility for missile strikes that exploded near the US consulate in Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdish region late Monday night.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said they targeted “spy headquarters and the gathering of anti-Iranian terrorist groups” near Erbil, the capital and most populated city in Kurdistan.

Four civilians were killed and six more were wounded in the attack that saw 10 missiles raining down in the area near the US consulate, the security council of the Kurdish regional government said.

The dead include prominent local businessman Pershraw Dizayi and his family members, former deputy speaker of Iraqi Kurdistan’s parliament, Hemin Hawrami, said on X. 

A rocket struck the home of the multimillionaire, who has a large portfolio of real estate and security services companies and was close to the Kurdish ruler. 

Another rocket hit the house of a senior Kurdish intelligence official and a third struck a Kurdish intelligence center, Iraqi security sources told Reuters. 

Iraqi Kurdish Prime Minister Masrour Barzani called the rocket strikes a “crime against the Kurdish people.”

No US facilities were struck or damaged, a US official told the Associated Press. Neither the new US consulate building nor the US troop base in Erbil International Airport appeared to be targeted. 

But an anonymous official with an Iranian-backed Iraqi militia told the AP that 10 missiles launched by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards fell in the affluent area near the large new consulate. 

A US defense official who spoke to the outlet on the condition of anonymity to discuss not yet public details said the US had tracked the missiles and initial indications found they were “reckless and imprecise.”

Iran said it struck the headquarters of Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency in a statement claiming responsibility for the strikes.

“In response to the recent atrocities of the Zionist regime, causing the killing of commanders of the Guards and the Axis of Resistance … one of the main Mossad espionage headquarters in Iraq’s Kurdistan region was destroyed with ballistic missiles,” the Guards said in a statement.

In a separate, but concurrent attack, the Guards said they also struck “terrorist operations” including Islamic State targets in Syria “and destroyed them by firing a number of ballistic missiles.”

Iran had vowed to avenge the killing of three Guards members who were serving as military advisors in Syria last month. 

“We assure our nation that the Guards’ offensive operations will continue until avenging the last drops of martyrs’ blood,” the Guards’ statement said.

Iran’s missile attacks come amid increasing concerns that the ongoing Israel-Hamas war in Gaza could spill over into other parts of the region as tensions grow between each side’s allies. 

With Post wires.