ERBIL, Kurdistan Region of Iraq – Two members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) were killed and two others were injured in an operation by gunmen in western Iran’s (Rojhelat) Kermanshah province, state media reported Tuesday.

Iranian state media on Tuesday said “terrorists” shot at a house door in Kermanshah’s Paveh on Monday evening, killing two local IRGC members and injuring two others.

The attack was claimed by a newly formed armed group called “Khori Hiwa,” which means “Sun of Hope” in Kurdish, according to the Oslo-based Hengaw Human Rights Organization. 

“As a result of an armed attack claimed by a newly established group calling itself 'Khori Hiwa,' at least two armed members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps…were killed in the city of Paveh in Kermanshah province,” Hengaw said.

It added that two others were seriously wounded, with one being in a coma and in an unstable condition.

Khori Hiwa accused one of those killed, identified as Khalid Khalidi, of playing a key role in the mass killing of young people during the Jin, Jiyan, Azadi (Women, Life, Freedom) uprising in 2022, according to Hengaw. 

Zhina (Mahsa) Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman from Saqqez in the Kurdish province of Sanandaj, died under suspicious circumstances in a Tehran detention center in September 2022 after being arrested for wearing a lax hijab.

Her death sparked Iran’s largest protest movement in Iran in more than four decades. Iranian authorities heavily cracked down on the demonstrations with over 500 people killed and tens of thousands others arrested during the nationwide movement.