Iraq vows to take Iran to UNSC over Erbil missile attack

The Iraqi foreign ministry said in a statement posted on its website that the Iraqi government “will take all legal procedures, including lodging a complaint with the United Nations Security Council” in response to the Iranian strikes.

The attack was an “aggression on Iraq’s sovereignty and the security of the Iraqi people, and an abuse to the good neighborliness and the security of the region”, it added.

It noted that the council of ministers formed a committee headed by Iraq’s national security advisor to investigate the incident and collect relevant information to support the government’s position at the international level.

The Iraqi Foreign Ministry also on Tuesday summoned the Iranian charge d’affaires to Baghdad over the strike.

The foreign ministry handed a note of protest to the Iranian envoy which included Iraq’s condemnation of the Iranian attacks on areas of Erbil.

The ministry called the attack “a blatant violation of Iraq’s sovereignty, sharply contradicting the principle of good neighborliness and international law”.

The Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Iraq has also announced that Iran targeted “several civilian residential areas” in Erbil with a large number of ballistic missiles, killing four civilians and injuring six others.

Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) announced, in separate operations, they have fired barrages of ballistic missiles at anti-Tehran terrorist groups’ bases in Syria as well as an Israeli espionage center in Iraq’s Kurdistan region in retaliation for recent terrorist attacks.

The IRGC said in a statement on Tuesday that the first barrage of missiles overnight hit the headquarters of terror groups in the militant-held areas in Syria.

The statement added they were involved in the recent terrorist attacks in the Iranian cities of Kerman and Rask.

The Iranian forces also targeted an espionage center used by Israel’s Mossad spy agency in Iraq’s Kurdistan region to plan terrorism plots in the region, according to a second statement by the IRGC.

The statement also noted the operation was in response to the recent assassinations of the commanders of resistance fronts by Israel.

The operation came after a twin terrorist bomb explosion in Kerman claimed by Daesh killed nearly 100 people and injured hundreds of others who had convened on January 3 to commemorate Iran’s senior commander General Qassem Soleimani on his martyrdom anniversary.

Another terrorist attack hit a police station in the city of Rask in Sistan and Baluchestan Province last month, which claimed the lives of 11 police officers and left at least six others injured.