At least two people were killed and nine more wounded as security forces launched cross-border strikes at opposition groups they accuse of fueling protests across Iran.
SULAIMANIYA, Iraq — Iran launched ballistic missile and drone attacks across the border at Kurdish Iranian opposition bases in Iraq on Monday, killing at least two people and wounding at least nine, according to opposition groups.
Iran’s semiofficial Fars news agency said on Monday that the security forces had targeted “terrorist groups” with missiles and drones. They blame the groups for fueling protests that have swept Iran since the death in custody in September of a young Kurdish-Iranian woman accused of violating the law on head scarves.
The Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran said two of its members were killed and at least nine severely wounded when its main base near the city of Koya in Iraq’s Kurdistan Region was hit by Iranian Fateh-110 ballistic missiles, said the deputy head of the party, Amanj Zebaii. He said five smaller mountain bases of the group in the Sidakan area were also hit.
The director of Koya’s main hospital, Sherwan Jalal, said ambulances had been dispatched but could not enter the base because of the continued danger of airstrikes. He said there were believed to be more casualties under the rubble. Mr. Jalal said Koya residents were coming in to donate blood for the wounded.
Another major opposition group, Komala, the Iranian Kurdish Communist Party, said its base near Sulaimaniya also came under attack Monday morning but did not suffer casualties. A Komala official, Navid Mehrawar, said the base was targeted with five suicide drones.
The Kurdish media posted videos of air raid sirens sounding from the U.S. consulate in the center of the Kurdish capital, Erbil
The attacks on Monday were the first since several days of Iranian strikes at the end of September killed 18 people, including a pregnant woman, and injured almost 60 at and around opposition bases across the region, according to Kurdish health ministry officials.
Iranian refugees, including women and children, were among the casualties, according to the U.N. refugee agency.
Several armed Iranian Kurdish opposition groups have maintained bases for years near the border in neighboring Iraq. They say they hold their weapons — mostly rifles and rocket-propelled grenades — for self-defense and to help defend the Iraqi border.
One of the groups, P.A.K., was part of the U.S.-backed coalition of Kurdish fighters battling the Islamic State after its takeover of parts of northern Iraq in 2014.
Iran has repeatedly demanded that Iraq shut down the opposition bases and disarm the fighters.
Iraq’s new prime minister, Mohammed Shia al-Sudani, told reporters in Baghdad on Saturday that the leadership of the Kurdistan Region, which is semiautonomous, had refused the disarmament demand.