“The Friday sermon of over 3500 mosques in the Kurdistan Region will be dedicated to talk about the IRGC attack on Erbil,” Nabaz Ismael, a spokesperson of the Kurdistan Regional Government’s (KRG) ministry of endowment and religious affairs told Rudaw before the start of the sermons.
“It was an unjustified attack, and it is against the principles of Islam and other religions. It is a great tragedy that requires religious scholars to take a stand against and talk about,” Ismael said, explaining the reason behind choosing the incident as a topic for the sermon.
The title of the sermon was “Attacks and assaults on Kurdistan Region are far from the sacred values of religion and humanity.”
“Before starting my sermon, I want to strongly condemn the tremendous crime committed by the Iranian forces against the city of Erbil and an innocent Civilian family on Monday night,” Dr Bashir Haddad said at the beginning of his sermon in Erbil’s Jalil Khayat Mosque.
In the late hours of Monday, the IRGC launched ten ballistic missiles toward Erbil, under the pretext of targeting “spy headquarters” of anti-Iran groups, killing four people.
The target in question was the house of Kurdish businessman Peshraw Dizayee, the owner of Falcon Group which runs major projects such as Empire World, who later succumbed to his injuries. His mansion was described by Tehran as a Mossad base - a claim strongly denied by Kurdish officials.
The KRG has categorically rejected the presence of Israeli intelligence in the Kurdistan Region.
Iraqi National Security Advisor Qasim al-Araji on Tuesday stated on X that “the claims that a Mossad headquarter was targeted [in the attack] are baseless.”
Apart from Dizayee, the strike's victims include his eleven-month-old daughter, Zhina, a housekeeper, and Iraqi businessman Karam Mikhail, who was visiting his Kurdish friend. His older son, Roj, 25, lost a hand in the strike. Rawan, his other son, is slightly injured.
“The accusations [of espionage] shocked us more than the attacks did because Mr. Peshraw was not involved in political and partisan activities and had no ties with intelligence agencies. He was purely neutral,” Dizayee’s office told Rudaw, adding that other members of the family who were targeted by Iran as well, were also not involved in politics.
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