SULAIMANI (ESTA) — Iraq rejects use of its territory to attack neighboring countries, Iraqi army’s chief of staff said on Tuesday.
The presidency of Iraqi army’s chief of staff said Iraq adhered to “good neighborliness and fraternal relations” with its neighboring countries, following Iran’s bombardment on border areas in the Kurdistan Region.
“Iraq strongly rejects the use of its territory for aggression against its neighbors,” it said in a statement, according to state news agency INA.
It stressed the need for all sides to adhere to the “language of brotherhood and cooperation,” the statement read.
It also expressed its “astonishment about the unjustified statements” attributed to the Iranian armed forces chief of staff Major General Mohammad Bagheri regarding the presence of “hostile movements” on the Iraqi territory against Iran.
Bagheri said last week that Baghdad and Erbil must deal with the opposition parties, which Iran says uses the Region’s border to attack Iran.
On Sept. 9, Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) bombarded several villages on the Kurdistan Region’s border areas with Iran.
There were no casualties in the bombardments that continued for three days.
An Iranian commander said on Monday that four bases of the opposition parties were destroyed in the operations against the armed Kurdish groups.
Bagheri said Iran would continue its “operation against opposition groups” and that Tehran would not “tolerate any mischief within these borders”, referring to the border region between Iran and the Kurdistan Region.
Iran accuses the Kurdish armed groups based on the Kurdistan Region’s border areas of disrupting its security.
There are frequent clashes along Iran’s border with the Kurdistan Region between Iranian security forces and Kurdish armed groups such as the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI) and the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK).
