Iranian officials deny the recent reports that an Iraqi Shia, linked to the Iranian officials detained by the US in Erbil, was behind the recent blast in Erbil that killed at least 19 Iraqis.
Iranian Bazteb News reported:
Iran’s Embassy in Baghdad on Friday denied a report by Al-Arabiya satellite channel allegedly linking recent blasts in Iraq’s Kurdistan with Iranian diplomats detained by US forces.
Al-Arabiya, quoting Iraq’s Kurdistan officials, claimed that an Iraqi Shia, recently arrested by Kurdistan’s security officials, had confessed to being connected with the five Iranian diplomats -detained by the US in Iraqi city of Erbil on January 11- and implicated them in the recent blasts in Kurdistan.
“Stressing the deep-rooted and friendly ties between the Islamic Republic of Iran and Kurds in north of Iraq, we consider as biased the fake report released by Al-Arabiya about the confession of an Iraqi Shia who implicated Iranian diplomats arrested in Erbil in the recent explosions in Iraq’s Kurdistan,” said the embassy in a statement.
“Such reports are fabricated by enemies of the two nations to damage Iran’s relations with all ethnic and religious groups in Iraq,” it added.
A new extremist group calling itself The Kurdistan Brigade of al-Qaeda in Iraq – which belongs to the Kurdish Ansar al-Islam, claimed responsibility for the bomb blast in Erbil that killed 19.