Cairo, Jan 16 (EFE).- Iran’s Revolutionary Guard on Tuesday attacked targets linked to the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group and “spies of the Zionist regime (Israel)” with ballistic missiles in Iraq and Syria, killing at least two civilians.
The Revolutionary Guard reported the attacks on social media, according to Iranian news outlets.
Iraqi security sources confirmed to EFE that at least eight missiles fell near the US consulate under construction in Arbil, in Iraqi Kurdistan, killing two civilians and wounding four.
The official IRNA news agency said the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps destroyed “a spy headquarters” and a “gathering of anti-Iranian terrorist groups” in Arbil.
Iraqi security sources interviewed by EFE confirmed the attack came from Iranian territory.
The IRGC also said it hit an alleged Israeli target, adding that it “was the center for developing espionage operations and planning terrorist actions in the region.”
The Guards also struck ballistic missile targets in Syria, which it said were “the gathering places of commanders and key elements related to recent terrorist operations, especially those of the Islamic State group,” Sepah news service reported.
It added that the attack in Syria was “in response to the recent crimes of the terrorist groups that unjustly martyred a group of our dear compatriots in Kerman and Rask.”
On Jan. 3 at least 94 people were killed in a double suicide bombing in the Iranian city of Kerman near the tomb of Qasem Soleimani, a general in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s Quds Force killed in a US bombing in 2020.
The Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack, one of the most brutal against civilians in Iran in decades, within hours of the blasts.
Iran has since arrested at least 35 people in connection with the attack and claimed that at least one of the suicide bombers was an “Israeli of Tajik nationality.”
Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, last week called for the “hidden” perpetrators of the attack to be “crushed,” in an apparent reference to the United States and Israel. EFE
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