Iran launched a drone strike overnight Tuesday against a camp of Iranian Kurdish opposition forces near Erbil in Iraq’s Kurdistan region, the first Iranian attack since the announcement of a ceasefire and war-ending understanding with the United States earlier this week. The Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran said the drone hit the Zawiya Sipi camp near Koya, east of Erbil, which it said houses families of party members.
The group said the camp had been attacked repeatedly during the 40 days of the war between Iran and the United States, and even after the ceasefire was announced in early April. According to the monitoring site Rudaw, Kurdistan has been hit by at least 865 missiles and drones since late February, and that number has risen since last week. The KDPI said Iran has targeted its family camps, medical facilities and education centers with more than 138 missiles and drones since late February.
The strike came one day after a senior U.S. official said the memorandum of understanding ending the war between Iran and the United States had already been signed by President Donald Trump, Vice President J.D. Vance and Iranian parliament speaker Mohammad-Baqer Qalibaf. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said the ceasefire with the U.S. took effect immediately after the announcement, while in Lebanon it would only formally begin on Friday, when the agreement is signed.
The attack has deepened Kurdish fears that the understandings do not protect them and leave them outside the deal. Kurdish sources also recently said Israel and the United States had, in principle, planned to help Kurdish fighters enter Iran from northern Iraq, but that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan pressed Trump to cancel it. Last week, Trump harshly criticized the Kurds, saying they kept U.S. weapons and telling them, “I’ll remember this.”
