Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) claimed responsibility for ballistic missile attacks on northern Iraq's Kurdish regional capital of Erbil on March 13, saying that the strikes targeted an Israeli "strategic center" in the city. Iranian state media reported [6] that the missiles were aimed at "Mossad bases" in Erbil. The IRGC had days earlier vowed to seek revenge against Israel, saying the Zionist state will "pay the price" for killing two of its guards in recent Israeli air-strikes [7] on targets in the Syrian capital Damascus. Erbil's governor Omed Khoshnaw denied any Israeli military or intelligence presence in the city, calling the accusation "baseless." The estimated 12 rocket strikes took no casualties, but caused damage to civilian properties and triggered panic among the populace in neighborhoods of Erbil. (Rudaw [10], Rudaw [11], Al Jazeera [12])
The missile strikes come a little more than a year after a rocket attack [13] on Erbil by an Iran-backed militia.
