Iran has launched a rare cross-border attack targeting an opposition group in neighboring Iraq over the weekend, state media says.
The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) sent drones atainst the headquarters of the Iranian Kurdish opposition group Komala in the Balisan region of Iraqi Kurdistan late Saturday, Mehr news agency said, and as reported in Bloomberg.
The drone strike inflicted "significant damage and casualties" - state media indicated.
There's been an intensified targeting of Kurdish dissident groups of late, given that in the opening months of Trump's Operation Epic Fury, US and Israeli officials openly talked about arming Kurdish groups along the Iran-Iraq border area.
One Middle East outlet notes in wake of the latest IRGC action: "The Revolutionary Guards have not immediately claimed responsibility for the strikes on these fighters, whom Iran accuses of being supported by Israel, its sworn enemy."
Asharq-Awsat reports of a prior similar cross-border strike this summer, "In the most deadly recent attack, nine Komala members were killed on July 17 near the city of Sulaymaniyah."
Kurdish and Middle East regional news sources are at the same time saying Iran's military is building up artillery and personnel in the country's northwest Kurdish regions bordering Iraq amid an intensifying crackdown on Kurdish opposition groups, and as Israel and the US threaten new attacks.
Additionally, the Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK) is being targeted, amid reports of recent clashes with security forces in the Shaho Mountains and other areas along the border with Iraqi Kurdistan.
The Kurdish population of Iran is a very sizeable minority of the country, commonly estimated at 10-15 million people primarily living in the northwestern and western areas of the country. Millions of Kurds also live on the Iraqi side of the border
Rudaw news recently reported from Irbil, "Iran has deployed artillery and heavy weaponry to Kurdish areas in the west of the country amid growing fears of a wider conflict with Israel and the United States, as the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) intensifies operations against armed opposition groups along the country's western and southeastern frontiers."
There have been prior reports of sporadic drone activity and artillery fire in the areas of Shaho and Marivan.
These flare-ups have long predated the current US-Iran war, but the heightened state of alert and growing temperature of the region could bring an intensification to Tehran's anti-Kurdish opposition crackdown.