(Bloomberg) -- Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps launched missiles at targets in northern Iraq and Syria in what it described as retaliation for a terrorist attack this month that killed almost 100 people near the burial site of General Qassem Soleimani.
Iran “targeted and destroyed espionage centers” in a ballistic missile strike in Iraq late Monday, the country's state-run Islamic Republic News Agency said in a statement, citing the IRGC. Four people were killed and six others wounded near Erbil, the Financial Times reported, quoting Kurdish authorities.
Tehran has launched multiple missile and drone strikes on positions in Iraq's Kurdistan region since late 2022 over what it said were national security threats from terrorist groups.
In a separate report by state-run Press TV, the IRGC said it targeted a gathering in Syria of the “commanders and main elements of recent terrorist attacks” in Iran.
The latest developments come with the Israel-Hamas war, and US-led strikes against Houthi militants in Yemen, raising fears of a broader Mideast war. The Houthi militant group hit a US-owned commercial vessel in the Red Sea with an anti-ship ballistic missile on Monday. Damage from that attack was minimal.
Read: US Merchant Vessel Struck as Shippers Told to Avoid Red Sea (4)
The US condemned Iran's move, with State Department spokesman Matthew Miller saying, “we oppose Iran's reckless missile strikes, which undermine Iraq's stability.”
While Iran said its opposition to Israel was the motive for the Jan. 3 attacks it suffered, Islamic State took responsibility for that bombing. Islamic State, an extremist Sunni group, is ideologically opposed to Shia-dominated Iran.
Read: About the General Whose Grave Was Site of Iran Blasts: QuickTake
The explosions in Iran earlier this month took place outside the graveyard where a crowd had gathered for a ceremony to commemorate the death of Soleimani in a US drone strike in Iraq's capital in 2020. The blasts were caused by bombs planted in a suitcase and a car near the graveyard entrance and detonated remotely, the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency reported.
(Adds report of additional Iranian strikes in Syria from first paragraph and US reaction in sixth paragraph.)
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