Iran Says Drone Hit Komala Headquarters in Iraqi Kurdistan; Group Reports No Casualties

Iran struck again at Iranian Kurdish opposition fighters on Iraqi soil Saturday night, and the two sides are giving different accounts of the damage.

The Mehr news agency, based in Tehran, said a drone operation by the Revolutionary Guards' ground forces targeted the "headquarters of the terrorist and separatist group Komala" in the Balisan region. Mehr claimed an initial assessment showed significant damage to the group's structure and operational capacity.

Komala tells it differently. In a statement, the party said a Shahed explosive-laden drone hit one of its bases in the Alana Valley of Balisan, about 90 kilometers northeast of Erbil, at around 10 pm. The strike caused material damage but no casualties, the group said, and its Peshmerga fighters in the area are safe. Komala blamed the Revolutionary Guards.

The Guards had not claimed responsibility for the strike as of Sunday, Oct. 25. Neither the Kurdistan Regional Government nor the federal government in Baghdad has commented publicly.

A pattern since February

This is not an isolated strike. Iran has repeatedly hit Iranian Kurdish opposition groups based in Iraq's Kurdistan Region since the US-Israeli war against Tehran began on Feb. 28. Rudaw's tally says Iran and pro-Iran groups have fired more than 1,000 drones and missiles at the region since the war started.

The deadliest recent attack came July 17, when a Revolutionary Guards missile strike on a Komala compound near Sulaymaniyah killed nine members, according to AFP.

The past two weeks have been busy. A drone strike on a Komala base in Balisan on Oct. 17 damaged buildings and a guard post but caused no casualties, according to a Komala official and a regional security source. On Wednesday, at least two projectiles launched from Iran hit positions of the Kurdistan Freedom Party (PAK) in the Balisan Valley. PAK spokesperson Rebaz Sharifi said there were no casualties. A security source said the weapons were two Iranian Hadid-110 attack drones.

Tehran's case

Iran's stated position is that these groups threaten its national security and are backed by Israel. Mehr's language, "terrorist and separatist," reflects that view. Komala's leadership denies receiving Israeli arms. The group says its work is about Kurdish rights in Iran and ending what it calls marginalization and oppression of Kurds.

No evidence of Israeli arms deliveries to Komala appears in the accounts of this strike. Iran's accusation remains an accusation.

A security deal that isn't holding

Iraq and Iran signed a security agreement in March 2023 that requires Baghdad to disarm Iranian Kurdish opposition groups and move them away from the shared border. Three years later, Iranian drones are still hitting their camps.

The dispute over the deal's enforcement flared again last Tuesday. Iran's ambassador to Baghdad claimed that Iraqi and Iranian authorities had agreed after a joint security meeting to expel the groups from the Kurdistan Region or hand them over to Tehran. An Iraqi official who attended the meeting denied any such agreement. Representatives of several Iranian Kurdish parties told Rudaw that neither Baghdad nor Erbil had told them to leave.

Baghdad's pledge under pressure

Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi told state-run Al-Iraqiya television on Friday that "Iraq will not participate in any war." He said Baghdad wants to remain a meeting point for regional rivals and is working to ease tensions between Iran and the United States.

The strikes in Kurdistan test that line. So does the argument over who controls Iraqi airspace. Axios reported this week that dozens of Israeli fighter jets flew toward Iran's border through Syrian and Iraqi airspace before turning back. Iranian lawmaker Mahmoud Nabavian demanded on X that Iraq act against the flights, warning that otherwise "the Iraqi people, Iraq's resistance groups and the Iranian nation will fulfill their duty."

On Saturday, the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella of Iran-aligned factions, called standing with Tehran a moral duty. The group also claimed to have documented 171 US violations of Iraqi airspace between Sept. 30 and Oct. 23. That figure has not been independently verified.

The US-led anti-ISIS coalition formally ended its military mission in Iraq on Sept. 30. Zaidi has set a deadline of June 30, 2027, for bringing all weapons under state control. Kataib Hezbollah and Harakat al-Nujaba oppose the plan, according to Rudaw. Harakat Ansar Allah al-Awfiya and Kataib Sayyid al-Shuhada have said they will cooperate.

The US Embassy in Iraq on Saturday updated the State Department's travel advisory, keeping its warning against all travel to Iraq and citing the threat of attacks by Iran-aligned militias and the Houthis.

The casualty question is unresolved. Mehr claims significant damage; Komala says no one was hurt. The Guards have not claimed the strike, and no independent assessment has been announced.

The larger question is political. Baghdad and Erbil have said nothing publicly about the strike, and an Iraqi official has already contradicted Iran's ambassador on the expulsion deal. Whether Zaidi's government answers the strikes, or the claim that it agreed to remove the groups, will show how much control it has over its own border region.