TEHRAN - As many as 100 elements aligned to separatist terrorist groups have been arrested following the first wave of military attacks of the IRGC on hostile targets in northern Iraq, an informed source has said.

The informed source told the Tasnim news agency on Tuesday that the IRGC would consider as “enemy soil” anywhere from which a threat is posed against Iran or an action is taken against the country’s national security.

Commenting on the several rounds of military attacks that the IRGC has carried out against the positions of terrorists in northern Iraq in the past weeks, the source said Iran reserves the right to launch any military operation to combat the threats, including ground, missile, artillery and drone operations.

Pointing to the latest round of strikes on the terrorists in northern Iraq on Monday, the source said such operations will continue until those hostile groups are fully disarmed or expelled from the Kurdistan Region.

According to the source, the terrorist groups proceeded with their hostile activities following the first stage of the strikes in September by getting involved in riots at Iran’s border cities.

“After the first round of operations against the separatist terrorist groups, 100 elements of those groups have been arrested amid the recent riots (in Iran), who have confessed to having links with the separatist terrorist groups,” the source noted, adding that a considerable amount of weapons and ammunition were transferred to Iran by those groups with the purpose of fomenting insecurity in the border cities, but the IRGC confiscated those cargos and arrested the criminals.

On Monday, the IRGC Ground Force pounded the positions of separatist militants in northern Iraq with missiles and drones.

These separatist groups commit acts of terror once in a while in west and northwestern Iran.

The bases of terrorists were struck 80 kilometers in north of Erbil, the capital of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG).

Iran has repeatedly called on the autonomous KRG government not to allow these militant groups to use northern Iraq as a hiding place.

An IRGC commander said on Monday that Iran will continue attacks on these groups so long as the KRG or the Iraqi central government doesn’t put an end to their presence in northern Iraq.

“So long as the Kurdistan Region or Iraq’s central government does not fulfill the demands of the Islamic Republic of Iran in disarming these grouplets and expel them, such moves will continue,” Brigadier General Mohammad-Taqi Asanlou asserted.

He added, “We targeted the positions of separatist terrorist grouplets with kamikaze drones, war drones and also missiles, and we precisely hit all targets that we had identified.”