‘They tried to wipe us out’: Kurds shelled as Iran seeks scapegoats for unrest

Exiled Kurdish forces in Iraq feel abandoned by west and say they need weapons like in Ukraine

Picking through a pile of twisted metal, Rebaz, a Kurdish Iranian fighter, stooped to cradle a jagged chrome piece that was dug from the ruins of his base. This was part of a Fateh missile," he said. It's one of the biggest that the Iranians have in their arsenal. It's from the day they tried to wipe us out."

The heap included other wreckage - of rockets and kamikaze drones that had devastated this small outpost, just east of Erbil in northern Iraq, a fortnight ago. Since then, jittery guards had looked from the ruins towards the east, from where more than two dozen ballistic missiles and another dozen kamikaze drones blazed from a blue sky a fortnight ago.