Injuries from Iran shelling of Kurdistan border areas

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – Iran shelling on Tuesday injured nomads that live in the mountainous regions along the country’s border with the Kurdistan Region in Erbil’s Haji Omaran and Sidakan subdistricts.

The shelling trapped several nomads in the area while most were able to flee, the administrator of Haji Omaran subdistrict, Farzing Ahmed, told Kurdistan 24.

“Bombardments have caused huge fires in the mountainous region of Barzbin [in Sidakan subdistrict],” Ihsan Chalabi, the mayor of the town of Sidakan, told Kurdistan 24 moments after the incident.

One of the nomads filmed the moment the bombs dropped and revealed that locals took many injured to hospitals to receive medical care.

The nomad, who does not reveal his name, says they fled the location to seek safety, fearing for their lives.

Over the past few years, Iran has repeatedly bombarded the Haji Omaran border area in what they claim are operations targeting Iranian Kurdish opposition rebels fighting for greater rights in the country.

In August 2017, Iranian artillery bombarded areas near Haji Omaran, killing two civilians and wounding two more, all of them brothers.

The Kurdistan Regional Government has called on Tehran to end its indiscriminate shelling of areas near the Kurdish border and asked Iranian Kurdish fighters to avoid using the Region to attack its neighboring state.

Editing by Karzan Sulaivany