Iran’s Revolutionary Guards shell militant bases north of Iraq’s Erbil – state media

DUBAI (Reuters) -Iran’s Revolutionary Guards artillery fire hit an area north of the Iraqi Kurdish capital of Erbil on Wednesday, targeting what Iranian state television described as terrorist bases.

Iraqi Kurdish media reported that a shell had landed in a village in the Sidekan area near the Iranian border, around 60 miles (100 km) northeast of Erbil.

Iraq’s foreign ministry condemned the Iranian shelling, which it said targeted some locations in the Sidekan area.

The Iranian state TV said no casualties had been reported.

Iran’s Tasnim news agency said the Guards have previously targeted Iranian Kurdish militants based in northern Iraq.

A local official, quoted by the Erbil-based Rudaw news website, said shells have occasionally hit the area in the past.

In March, the Guards carried out an attack against what Iranian state media described as “Israeli strategic centres” in Erbil, suggesting it was revenge for Israeli air strikes that killed Iranian military personnel in Syria.

The Iraqi Kurdish regional government said the attack in March only targeted civilian residential areas, not sites belonging to foreign countries, and called on the international community to carry out an investigation.

(Reporting by Dubai Newsroom; additional reporting by Amina Ismail in Erbil, John Davison in Baghdad and Yasmin Hussein in Cairo ; Writing by Parisa Hafezi; Editing by Catherine Evans, Edmund Blair and Angus MacSwan)