AMSTERDAM (Reuters) – The Dutch government on Friday summoned the Iranian ambassador to the Netherlands following the death of a Dutch baby in an attack by Iran on Erbil, Iraq.
Iran on Monday struck Erbil, the capital of Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan region, with ballistic missiles in what it said was an attack on an Israeli spy headquarters, a claim denied by Iraqi and Iraqi Kurdish officials.
The attack killed at least four people, including a prominent Kurdish businessman and his infant child.
A Dutch child of less than one year old had died in attacks by Iran on Erbil, Dutch Foreign Minister Hanke Bruins Slot said in a statement.
She added she had asked her Iranian counterpart, Hossein Amirabdollahian, for clarification and had summoned the Iranian ambassador.
Amirabdollahian, in comments quoted by Iran’s state media, told Bruins Slot: “We don’t have documentary proof about the killing of a child at the Mossad terrorist compound in northern Iraq.”
“We are drawing the Dutch government’s attention to the genocide and massacre of thousands of Palestinian women and children in Gaza,” he added in the phone call.
(Reporting by Bart Meijer and Charlotte Van Campenhout, additional reporting by Dubai newsroom; editing by Christina Fincher and Philippa Fletcher)
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