Powerful explosions occurred on Monday night on the outskirts of Arbil, in Iraqi Kurdistan, an autonomous region in northern Iraq, according to security officials cited by Reuters and Xinhua news agencies. Hospital sources speak of at least two dead and five injured.

Moments later, Iran’s Revolutionary Guards announced that they had launched ballistic missile strikes against spy centers and “gathering sites of anti-Iranian terrorist groups” near Arbil in northern Iraq, claiming to have destroyed “the Israeli Mossad’s espionage headquarters in Iraqi Kurdistan.” according to the Fars news agency.

“The Guard identified and destroyed commanders’ gathering areas and other locations with ballistic missiles in response to recent terrorist atrocities in Iran,” the same statement said.

The targets of the attack, according to the Revolutionary Guards, were also positions of the Islamic State group, which claimed responsibility for the January 3 bombing in the Iranian city of Kerman that killed nearly 100 people during a ceremony in memory of General Qassem Soleimani.