IRGC Bombards Mountains Near Three Kurdish Villages, Then Blocks Residents From Targeted Areas
Iran’s Revolutionary Guard shelled and used kamikaze drones against forested highlands near Gagel, Haneh Sheikhan and Qamisheleh in Marivan county for about an hour, rights monitors say, then barred locals from entering the struck terrain.
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has again turned parts of the country’s Kurdish northwest into a restricted zone.
On Wednesday, IRGC units launched artillery and kamikaze drone strikes on forested mountains near the villages of Gagel, Haneh Sheikhan and Qamisheleh in Marivan county, according to the Kurdistan Human Rights Network (KHRN). The group said the bombardment lasted around an hour.
KHRN reported that no casualties had been recorded, but that residents had been barred from entering the targeted areas after the attack. The IRGC says operations of this kind are aimed at Kurdish opposition fighters. The reporting available does not independently verify who or what was hit in the strikes near the three villages.
The decision to cordon off the strike zones matters for people living nearby. Areas used for grazing, gathering firewood or transit are suddenly treated as military space, and residents are left weighing the risks of entering land where shells and one-way attack drones have just been used.
Iran has repeatedly used artillery and drones in Kurdish regions along the border in recent years. Each new round of fire reinforces a pattern in which the IRGC treats nearby mountains as a battlefield while villages at their base live with the consequences.
Key signs to watch now are whether the access restrictions around Gagel, Haneh Sheikhan and Qamisheleh remain in place, whether local groups report economic or displacement effects from the cordon, and if similar bombardments are reported closer to the Iraqi border, where the risk of cross-border incidents rises.
Sources
- OSINT