Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) has pounded the positions of terrorists in northern Iraq days after warning against anti-Iran movements, Tasnim news agency reports.
The IRGC Ground Force used suicide and combat drones as well as smart and precision-guided artillery on Thursday morning to target the terrorists in the semi-autonomous region's rugged mountains.
It came days after the force’s commander, Brigadier General Mohammad Pakpour, warned the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) not to allow terrorist groups to use its territory to threaten the Islamic Republic.
Further details of the IRGC strikes will be announced subsequently, Tasnim said.
In remarks on Monday, Pakpour said armed terrorist groups use Iraq’s northern territory as a base to sow insecurity in Iran’s border regions, warning that “continuation of this situation is not tolerable for us and we will give the necessary response to terrorists.”
General Pakpour noted that Iran has frequently warned and informed the KRG officials about the moves made by armed terrorist groups in their region to penetrate into Iran and threaten the country’s security.
The commander warned the terrorist groups of a crushing response, and asked the inhabitants of the region to distance themselves from the terrorists’ positions, so that no harm would come to them.
Iraqi Kurdistan Region has been used for a long time by anti-Iran terror groups such as the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and its offshoot, PJAK, which are active in Iraq and Turkey, to launch occasional attacks against the positions of Iranian border guards and border areas in northwestern parts of the country. The attacks have been invariably faced with crushing responses from Iran's border guards and other military units deployed in those areas.