Iraq Starts Relocating Iranian Kurdish Fighters from Iran Border, Says Iraq FM 

Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein attends a trilateral meeting with counterparts of Egypt and Jordan, at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Cairo, Egypt, August 15, 2023. (Reuters)
Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein attends a trilateral meeting with counterparts of Egypt and Jordan, at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Cairo, Egypt, August 15, 2023. (Reuters)
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Iraq Starts Relocating Iranian Kurdish Fighters from Iran Border, Says Iraq FM 

Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein attends a trilateral meeting with counterparts of Egypt and Jordan, at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Cairo, Egypt, August 15, 2023. (Reuters)
Iraqi Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein attends a trilateral meeting with counterparts of Egypt and Jordan, at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Cairo, Egypt, August 15, 2023. (Reuters)

Iraq has started relocating Iranian Kurdish groups from Iraq's Kurdish region frontiers with Iran to camps far from the border as part of a security agreement between Baghdad and Tehran, Foreign Minister Fuad Hussein said on Tuesday.

Iraq and Iran signed a border security agreement in March, a move Iraqi officials said was aimed primarily at tightening the frontier with Iraq's Kurdish region, where Tehran says armed Kurdish dissidents pose a threat to its security.

"Based on the agreement between Iraq and Iran, necessary measures were taken to remove these groups from the border areas and they were housed in camps deep inside Iraqi Kurdistan," Hussein told a press conference on Tuesday.

Hussein said he would visit Tehran on Wednesday to deliver the message in person in the hopes that it would prevent any escalation on the border.

Tehran has long accused Iraq's autonomous northern Kurdish region of sheltering militant groups involved in attacks against Iran, with Iran's Revolutionary Guards in turn repeatedly targeting their bases.

The Iranian foreign ministry said last month that under the agreement struck with Iraq, Baghdad committed to disarm Iranian Kurdish opposition groups in Iraq's Kurdistan region, close their bases, and relocate them to other locations before September 19.

Iranian officials have said that, if the deadline was missed, they could resume attacks against dissident groups inside Iraqi Kurdistan that Tehran had regularly undertaken until the end of last year.

In September 2022, the Revolutionary Guards fired missiles and drones at militant targets at Iraq's Kurdish region, killing 13 people, according to local authorities.

"We will discuss with the Iranian side not to threaten to use violence and not to threaten to attack some areas in the Kurdistan region of Iraq," Hussein said.



Israel Says it Killed Hamas Commander in Lebanon

A damaged apartment which was hit earlier by an apparent Israeli airstrike, in the southern port city of Sidon, Lebanon, Friday, April 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)
A damaged apartment which was hit earlier by an apparent Israeli airstrike, in the southern port city of Sidon, Lebanon, Friday, April 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)
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Israel Says it Killed Hamas Commander in Lebanon

A damaged apartment which was hit earlier by an apparent Israeli airstrike, in the southern port city of Sidon, Lebanon, Friday, April 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)
A damaged apartment which was hit earlier by an apparent Israeli airstrike, in the southern port city of Sidon, Lebanon, Friday, April 4, 2025. (AP Photo/Mohammed Zaatari)

 

The Israeli military said on Friday it had killed Hassan Farhat, a commander of Palestinian militant group Hamas, in the Sidon region of southern Lebanon. 

The state-run National News Agency said three people were killed in the attack. "A hostile drone raided a residential apartment... in Sidon, causing two successive explosions that led to a fire and extensive damage," reported NNA.

Emergency workers rushed to the scene where they recovered "the bodies of three martyrs," the agency said.

According to local media reports, Farhat's two children were also killed in the attack.

It was the first time an airstrike had hit Lebanon’s third largest city since a tenuous ceasefire agreement brought an end to the latest Israel-Hezbollah war in late November.

Israel has continued to carry out regular airstrikes targeting what it has said are facilities and officials of Hezbollah and allied groups since the ceasefire.