Drone strike kills two Iranian opposition members in Iraq; Tehran said to blame

A drone strike killed two members of an Iranian Kurdish armed opposition group in northern Iraq on Friday, a senior official from the exiled party says, blaming the attack on Iran.

Since the start of the Middle East war, Iran has repeatedly struck positions belonging to Iranian Kurdish exiled groups in Iraq.

“A drone struck one of our positions at 4:40 p.m. (1340 GMT),” killing two party members and wounding four others, Mardin Zahidi, from the Khabat Organization of Iranian Kurdistan, tells AFP.

The attack occurred in the mountains of Bashiqa, in an area under Kurdish control, between the city of Mosul and the autonomous Kurdistan region.

Zahidi blames the attack “on Iran and its militias.”

Another opposition group, the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI), accuses Iran on X of targeting “a civilian base” belonging to the group near Kurdistan’s capital Erbil, with no casualties reported.

The northern Kurdistan region hosts camps and rear bases operated by several Iranian Kurdish rebel groups, which Iran designates as terrorist organizations and accuses of serving Western or Israeli interests.

Last month, five groups, including the PDKI, announced a political coalition to seek the overthrow of Iran’s Islamic Republic and ultimately to secure Kurdish self-determination.