Drones struck camps in northern Iraq housing Iranian-Kurdish opposition fighters on Monday 27 July, France 24 reported, in an account that leaves the attacker unnamed1.
Six drones were intercepted near Erbil International Airport three days earlier, five shot down and one crashing into farmland, closing Iraqi Kurdistan's main airport until flights resumed later that morning. The camps sit in the Kurdistan region, where Iranian Kurdish parties driven out of Iran after 1979, principally the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan and Komala, have kept bases for four decades. Tehran has hit them repeatedly with drones and ballistic missiles, most heavily in 2022 and again in 2024, on the argument that they run operations back across the border. Baghdad and Erbil have each time protested the violation of Iraqi airspace and each time absorbed it.
What is different on 27 July is the pairing. Iraqi territory served as the launch ground for the drones Saudi Arabia and Jordan shot down that day, and Iraqi territory took drones of its own. A government arguing that armed groups operate beyond its control is making the same case, from the opposite end, as a government complaining that its airspace is used against it.
