The entrance to Erbil airport in Iraqi Kurdistan. (Credit: Safin Hamed/AFP/Archive photo)
Defense systems shot down an armed drone on Thursday over Erbil airport in northern Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region, where US and other international forces are stationed, security sources told Reuters news agency.
This incident comes as Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) claimed responsibility for a series of strikes on Erbil, the capital of Iraqi Kurdistan, Monday night. The attack was carried out with ballistic missiles and suicide drones on the city of 1.5 million people, claiming four lives, injuring others, and damaging residential areas.
"In response to the recent atrocities of the Zionist [Israeli] regime, causing the killing of commanders of the Guards and the 'Axis of Resistance' ... one of the main Mossad espionage headquarters in Iraq's Kurdistan region was destroyed with ballistic missiles," the Guards said in a statement, referring to Monday night's strikes.
"We assure our nation that the Guards' offensive operations will continue until avenging the last drops of martyrs' blood," the Guards' statement said.
Iran had already vowed revenge for the killing of three members of the Guards in Syria last month, including a senior Guards commander, who had served as military advisers there.
On Jan. 3, twin suicide bombing attacks in southern Iran, later claimed by the Islamic State, killed 91 people who were attending a memorial ceremony at the tomb of Qassem Soleimani, a top Revolutionary Guards general assassinated in a US drone strike in Iraq in January 2020.
This was the deadliest attack by militants in Iran since its 1979 revolution.