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Civilian toll of Iranian raids in northern Iraq enrages Kurds
Outrage is growing in Iraq's northern Kurdish territories over renewed Iranian air and artillery strikes against Kurdish rebels in the remote Qandil Mountains, officials and residents said.
Last week, Iran even sent ground forces about a mile into Iraqi territory, a brief incursion that Kurdish officials said elicited not a word of protest from the Iran-friendly administration of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki, who like Iran's rulers is a Shiite Muslim. Most Iraqi Kurds are Sunni Muslims.
"The breach of the Iranian troops on the borders of the Kurdistan region is a violation of the sovereignty of Iraq and international agreements," Kawa Mahmoud, a spokesman for the Kurdistan Regional Government, said in a statement. "We call upon the federal government to resolve the case through diplomatic means."
The latest Iranian strikes on the Iraqi mountainside redoubts of the Iranian Kurdish group known as the Free Life Party of Kurdistan put Kurdish officials in a bind.