Iran attacked Iraq’s northern city of Erbil on Sunday with a dozen ballistic missiles in an unprecedented assault on the capital of the autonomous Iraqi Kurdish region that appeared to target the United States and its allies.
The missiles came down in areas near a new U.S. consulate building, according to Kurdish officials. U.S. officials said no Americans were hurt and nor were U.S. facilities hit. Kurdish authorities said only one civilian was hurt and no one killed.
Iranian state media said Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps carried out the attack against Israeli “strategic centres” in Erbil, suggesting it was revenge for recent Israeli air strikes that killed Iranian military personnel in Syria.
The attack, in which huge blasts shook windows of homes in Erbil after midnight, was a rare publicly declared assault by Tehran against allies of Washington.
The last time Iran fired missiles directly at U.S. facilities was when it struck the Ain Al Asad air base in western Iraq in January 2020 – a retaliation for the U.S. killing of Iranian commander Qassem Soleimani.
It also comes days after Israel carried out an air raid in Syria which the IRGC said killed two of its members and for which it vowed retaliation.