Government forces fire on demonstrators say activists

The semiofficial Fars news agency reported protests in Javanrud on Sunday night, saying security forces were fired upon with live ammunition. It said two people were killed and four wounded.

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Later on Monday, state TV interviewed a local security official, Mohammad Pourhashemi, who blamed the shooting in Javanrud on local gunmen who he said had exchanged fire with security forces. The report did not provide further details.

At least 426 people have been killed and more than 17,400 arrested, according to Human Rights Activists in Iran, a group monitoring the unrest. It says at least 55 members of the security forces have been killed.

Jalal Mahmoudzadeh, a lawmaker representing the Kurdish city of Mahabad, told the Etemad daily that 11 people have been killed during protests in the city since late October, many of them in recent days. He said some members of the security forces fired upon homes and businesses on Saturday, and he called on authorities to adopt a softer touch.

The unrest cast a shadow over the World Cup on Monday, where the Iranian national team faced off against England. Iran’s players did not sing along to their national anthem, and some fans chanted Amini’s name at the 22nd minute of the match.

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The violence has also spilled across the border into neighbouring Iraq’s northern Kurdish region. Iran has blamed the unrest at home in part on Kurdish groups based in Iraq, and has targeted them with missile and drone attacks.

Iran said on Monday that its latest strikes were necessary to protect the country’s borders, while Kurdish officials condemned the attacks as unprovoked aggression. Iraq’s central government, which is dominated by parties close to Iran, also condemned the strikes.

A strike late Sunday killed a member of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan, said Mohammed Nazif Qaderi, a senior official in the Kurdish Iranian group living in exile in Iraq.

The group said Iranian surface-to-surface missiles and drones hit its bases and adjacent refugee camps in Koya and Jejnikan. The group also asserted that the strikes had hit a hospital in Koya.

The Iranian strikes come in the wake of a visit to Baghdad last week by Esmail Ghaani, the commander of Iran’s elite Quds Force. During the visit, Ghaani threatened Iraq with a ground military operation in the country’s north if the Iraqi army does not fortify the border.

Some Kurdish groups have been engaged in a low-intensity conflict with Tehran since the 1979 revolution. Iran accuses them of inciting protests in Iran and smuggling weapons into the country, allegations the Kurdish groups have denied. Iran has not provided evidence to back up the claims.

On Monday, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Nasser Kanaani told reporters that Iran had acted to “protect its borders and security of its citizens based on its legal rights.” He alleged that the government in Baghdad and the Irbil-based administration of Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region had failed to implement purported commitments to prevent threats against Iran from Iraqi areas.

The government of the autonomous Kurdish region of Iraq condemned the strikes as a “gross infringement of international law and neighbourly relations”.

Qaderi told The Associated Press the Kurdish opposition groups in Iraq support the protests in Iran, which he described as a reaction to “the policies of this regime” he said oppresses its people. He denied that his group has sent fighters or weapons to Iran.

He said that his group had moved fighters away from the border to avoid giving Iran an “excuse” for further attacks. He called on the international community to prevent further aggression by Iran.

The United States condemned the latest Iranian strikes. “Such indiscriminate and illegal attacks place civilians at risk, violate Iraqi sovereignty, and jeopardise the hard-fought security and stability of Iraq and the Middle East,” Gen. Michael E. Kurilla, who heads US Central Command, said in a statement.

Sunday’s Iranian strikes in northern Iraq come a day after Turkey launched deadly airstrikes over northern regions of Syria and Iraq, targeting Kurdish groups that Ankara holds responsible for last week’s bomb attack in Istanbul.

On Monday, Turkish officials said suspected Kurdish militants in Syria fired rockets into the border town of Karkamis in Turkey, killing two people, including a teacher and a 5-year-old boy.