Senior IRGC commander: Israeli agent killed in September strikes on Kurds

The strikes targeted the headquarters of the Kurdistan Democratic Party-Iran in Koya.

By ANNA AHRONHEIM
Updated: NOVEMBER 15, 2018 18:05
The aftermath of an Iranian ballistic missile strike on the Koya headquarters of the KDP-I Iranian opposition group in northern Iraq (photo credit: ZACH HUFF)
The aftermath of an Iranian ballistic missile strike on the Koya headquarters of the KDP-I Iranian opposition group in northern Iraq
(photo credit: ZACH HUFF)
An Israeli agent was among the casualties in an Iranian strike against the Kurdistan Democratic Party-Iran in Koya in Iraq’s Kurdistan region on September 9, a senior commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps said Wednesday.
According to Brig.-Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps Aerospace Force, representatives from Israel and Saudi Arabia were in the command center of the Kurdistan Democratic Party-Iran (KDP-I) in Koya, a city in the Erbil Governorate close to the Iranian border, when the strikes occurred.
“In another operation where democratic terrorists were present, we targeted the place of their meeting room – a meeting where Saudi and representatives of the Zionist regime were also present and engaged in discussion,” Hajizadeh was quoted as saying by the Qom-based AhlulBayt News Agency.
The Iranian strikes also targeted a training center belonging to the Democratic Party of the Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI), as well as a Peshmerga complex.
According to the KDP-I’s statement, the bombardment killed 14 members of the two parties and injured another 40 including the Secretary of KDP-I, Mustafa Mawludi and his predecessor Khalid Azizi. The Israeli operative was not named in the statement.
“Both these examples show our forces’ complete intelligence capabilities and the height of our power and ability,” Hajizadeh said.
“Today, instead of sending fighter jets to locations of the operations, we precisely target the meeting room of the leaders of Daesh (ISIS) from 700 km. away. All of these show our intelligence and military might,” Hajizadeh continued, adding that “but our enemies still obscenely threaten us.”
Hajizadeh, who was speaking on Wednesday in Qazvin in northern Iran also accused Israel, the United States, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates of working together to mastermind plots against the Islamic Republic, Iran’s Fars News reported Thursday.
“The US, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and the Zionist regime are advancing three hostile projects focused on economy, psychological operations and stirring insecurity in the country,” he said, adding that groups who are supported by the four countries have carried out close to 80 operations to foment insecurity in Iran, but achieved success in only less than 3% of these cases.”
In early November, Iran’s Telecommunication Minister Mohammad Javad Azeri Jahromi accused Israel of a cyber attack targeting the country’s communications infrastructure.
A week earlier, the head of country’s military unit in charge of combating sabotage said that President Hassan Rouhani’s cellphone had been tapped and a report by Iran’s semi-official ISNA’s report, carried by Al Jazeera, said that Iran had also neutralized a potent new version of the Stuxnet virus, which in 2011 destroyed thousands of centrifuges involved in Iran’s nuclear program.
While no country ever acknowledged being behind the attack, it was widely believed to have been carried out by the United States and Israel.