Protest-hit Iran Launches Strikes That Kill 9 In Iraqi Kurdistan

Iran launched cross-border missile and drone strikes that killed nine people in Iraq's Kurdistan region Wednesday after accusing Kurdish armed groups based there of stoking a wave of unrest that has rocked the Islamic republic. The September 16 death of Kurdish Iranian woman Mahsa Amini, 22, while in the custody of Iran's morality police has sparked a major wave of protests and a crackdown that has left scores of demonstrators dead over the past 12 nights. Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has in recent days accused the Iraq-based Kurdish groups of "attacking and infiltrating Iran from the northwest of the country to sow insecurity and riots and spread unrest". After several earlier Iranian cross-border attacks that caused no casualties, a barrage of missiles and drones on Wednesday claimed nine lives and wounded 32, said the regional health minister in Arbil, Saman al-Barazanji, while visiting some off the wounded in a hospital in the capital of Iraq's autonomous Kurdistan region. "There are civilians among the victims", including one of those killed, a senior official of the Kurdistan region earlier told AFP.