Escalating Middle East conflict: Iran strikes Kurdish groups in Iraq

Israel pounded Tehran with fresh strikes and Iran targeted Kurdish guerrilla groups in Iraq on Thursday as a spiralling war in the Middle East engulfed the entire region.

A conflict ignited on Saturday with US-Israeli attacks that killed Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has spread rapidly, snarling global shipping and energy markets, and sowing panic and chaos in previously safe-haven Gulf nations.

In Lebanon, AFPTV images showed buildings in rubble and plumes of black smoke drifting over Beirut after Israeli strikes aimed at Iran-backed militant group Hezbollah.

AFP reporters in Tehran heard fighter jets screaming across the skies in the west of the city and several explosions as Israel launched a fresh barrage.

Earlier yesterday, Tehran said it had hit Iraq-based Kurdish groups, as the United States reportedly seeks to arm Iranian Kurdish guerrillas to infiltrate Iran.

The strikes, which killed a member of an exiled Iranian Kurdish group, according to a representative, followed a warning from Iranian officials.

“Separatist groups should not think that a breeze has blown and try to take action,” said Ali Larijani, secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council.

“We will not tolerate them in any way.”

The strikes were further evidence of how the war is drawing in parties across the region and also further afield.

Australia deployed two military aircraft to the theatre while Canada’s Prime Minister Mark Carney said he could not rule out his armed forces taking part in hostilities.

The war has also dragged in NATO member Turkey after a missile launched from Iran was destroyed by NATO air defences as it headed towards its airspace. While a Turkish official said the missile appeared to have been aimed at a British base in Cyprus, Turkey summoned the Iranian ambassador over the incident.

The conflict even reached the coast of Sri Lanka, where a US submarine sank an Iranian warship, Washington’s first torpedoing of a vessel since World War II.

The strike killed at least 87 people, Sri Lankan officials said, with 61 remaining missing. Thirty-two sailors were rescued, many wounded, said Foreign Minister Vijitha Herath.

“Mark my words: The US will come to bitterly regret the precedent it has set”, said Iranian Foreign Minister Abas Araghchi about the attack that he described as “an atrocity at sea.”Iran’s official IRNA news agency said 1 045 military personnel and civilians have been killed since the war.

Early yesterday, AFP reporters in Jerusalem heard explosions following warnings of incoming Iranian missile fire, but residents were quickly cleared to leave their shelters.

Across the border in Lebanon, Israel said its forces had hit “several command centres belonging to the Hezbollah terrorist organisation” in south Beirut.

Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency (NNA) said a separate pre-dawn Israeli drone strike hit an apartment in Beddawi, a Palestinian refugee camp near Tripoli, killing senior Hamas official Wassim Atallah al-Ali and his wife.

Hezbollah’s leader vowed on Wednesday to step up its fight against Israel, saying the group had targeted Israeli positions as far as Tel Aviv in at least 15 attacks.

“We are facing aggression... our choice is to confront it until the ultimate sacrifice, and we will not surrender,” Hezbollah leader Naim Qassem declared in his first speech since the latest round of fighting broke out.

Lebanese authorities said at least 72 people had been killed, 437 wounded and 83 000 displaced from their homes since Monday.

Iran has retaliated by hitting US-linked interests in its Gulf neighbours, as well as energy infrastructure.

Thirteen people, seven of them civilians, have been killed in countries around the Gulf since the war began, including an 11-year-old girl in Kuwait.

AFP