The drone that exploded near the shelter where Sarwan and nine other fighters had taken cover didn’t spray the usual cloud of metal fragments. It released something they found even more frightening.
“Thick smoke and flames poured into the shelter,” Sarwan, a fighter with the opposition Kurdistan Freedom Party of Iran, told MBN. “We had to get out with flames rising from our bodies.”
The July 19 attack near Darashakran, west of Erbil, wounded 10 of the party’s fighters. Doctors and officials with the Kurdistan Freedom Party said they now suspect that white phosphorus was used in the attack.
MBN could not independently verify what substance was involved.
White phosphorus is highly flammable when exposed to air and can cause deep burns. International law restricts the use of white phosphorus and other incendiary weapons, including bans on their use against civilians or military targets close to non-combatants.
More than two weeks after the attack, Sarwan was still receiving treatment at a hospital in Erbil for severe burns to his back, legs and face.
Khalil Naderi, a spokesman for the Kurdistan Freedom Party, said the strikes produced “an enormous amount of fire” and white smoke. Most of the injuries documented by the party, he said, were severe burns rather than shrapnel wounds. The injuries were similar to those party fighters suffered during attacks from 2014-2017 by Islamic State, which is known to have used white phosphorous, Naderi said.
Hana, an Iranian Kurdish human rights organization based in Canada, called on Iraqi authorities and the Kurdistan Regional Government to establish an independent investigative committee that would include forensic, chemical and weapons experts to examine the attack site and munition remnants and determine what substance was used.
The suspicions come as Iranian attacks on positions belonging to Iranian Kurdish opposition parties in northern Iraq have intensified.
Two days after the Darashakran attack, the Komala Party of Kurdistan’s Toilers said one of its positions northeast of Erbil was hit by a missile strike, wounding six of its fighters. Chiman Jawanrudi, a senior party official who has been helping care for the wounded, said these fighters also hadn’t been struck by shrapnel.
“There was a large explosion, followed immediately by a second one,” she said. “After that, the fighters began suffering severe shortness of breath and burning sensations in their skin and throat.”
Ali Khoshnamak, another senior party official, said similar symptoms also appeared among fighters who arrived at the site after the bombardment had ended.
Some of them, he said, began choking and felt burning sensations on their skin and in their throats for hours after entering the area.
MBN’s correspondent in the Kurdistan Region spoke with six doctors in Erbil who had reviewed cases involving people wounded in the two attacks. The doctors said the pattern of burns and some of the symptoms they observed were consistent with exposure to an incendiary substance like white phosphorus.
A definitive identification of the substance, however, would require laboratory analysis of munition remnants or samples collected from the attack sites, according to the doctors who spoke with MBN.
Since late February, the Kurdistan Region has been subjected to a series of missile and drone attacks carried out by Iran or Iranian-aligned groups in Iraq. Iranian Kurdish opposition parties say the number of attacks has exceeded 1,000, a figure MBN could not independently verify.
Sources told MBN that military installations as well as airports and other populated areas across the region have been hit, along with sites linked to U.S. military facilities.
The pace of the attacks has increased since mid-July. According to MBN’s tally, the region has been hit on some days by five to eight drone or missile strikes.
In an investigation published July 13, MBN reported that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps — which is designated as a terrorist organization by the U.S. — had reinforced its military presence along the border with the Kurdistan Region. The report cited leaders of Kurdish opposition parties who said Iran had deployed special forces, artillery, tanks, missiles, drones and multiple-launch rocket systems.
Adapted and translated from the original Arabic.
