Abrams has 3-run double, Call has HR and 3 RBIs, Garcia also homers as Nationals beat Twins 9-3

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — CJ Abrams had a three-run double against Minnesota All-Star Joe Ryan, Alex Call homered and drove in three runs and Luis García Jr. also went deep as the Washington Nationals beat the Twins 9-3 on Saturday night.

Mitchell Parker (7-10) allowed two runs and eight hits in 5 2/3 innings to win his second straight start for the Nationals. Luis García got four outs, and Jackson Rutledge allowed a run in the eighth before Andrew Chafin closed it out with a scoreless ninth.

Drew Millas went 3 for 4 and had a leadoff single against Ryan in the third before stealing second. Call had an RBI pinch-hit single to give the Nationals a 1-0 lead. Call was called on to hit with the count 0-2 after Jacob Young was forced to leave when he took a pitch off his right index finger on a bunt that went foul.

García led off the fourth with his eighth home run for a 2-0 lead.

Abrams' three-run double came with nobody out in the fifth after second baseman Brooks Lee dropped a pop-fly in shallow right for an error to load the bases. Ryan (10-5) retired the next three before leaving. He allowed four earned runs and six hits.

Royce Lewis had an RBI single and Ty France had a two-out RBI double to chase Parker in the sixth and cut it to 5-2.

Call led off the seventh with his third homer — an opposite-field shot to right off Justin Topa for a 6-2 lead. Garcia doubled and scored on Josh Bell's single in the eighth. Bell scored on a wild pitch and Call had an RBI fielder's choice for the final runs.

Byron Buxton went 0 for 3 before leaving after six innings with soreness in his left side. He is day to day.

Abrams' double came on the first pitch from Ryan following Lee's dropped pop-up and Washington never looked back.

Washington's victory evens the all-time series at 13-all.

Nationals RHP Jake Irvin (7-5, 4.81) starts Sunday. The Twins have not announced a starter.

AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/mlb

Minnesota Twins starting pitcher Joe Ryan yells while walking back to the dugout after completing the bottom of the fifth inning of a baseball game against the Washington Nationals, Saturday, July 26, 2025, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr)

Washington Nationals starting pitcher Mitchell Parker delivers during the third inning of a baseball game against the Minnesota Twins, Saturday, July 26, 2025, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr)

Washington Nationals' Luis García Jr. (2) celebrates next to Minnesota Twins catcher Christian Vázquez, left, while crossing home plate after hitting a solo home run during the fourth inning of a baseball game Saturday, July 26, 2025, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr)

Washington Nationals' Alex Call watches his solo home run during the seventh inning of a baseball game against the Minnesota Twins, Saturday, July 26, 2025, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr)

Washington Nationals' CJ Abrams hits a two-run double during the fifth inning of a baseball game against the Minnesota Twins, Saturday, July 26, 2025, in Minneapolis. (AP Photo/Abbie Parr)

IRBIL, Iraq (AP) — An Iranian Kurdish separatist group in Iraq said it has launched attacks on Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard in recent days in retaliation for Tehran’s violent crackdown on protests.

Members of the National Army of Kurdistan, the armed wing of the Kurdistan Freedom Party, or PAK, have “played a role in the protests through both financial support and armed operations to defend protesters when needed,” Jwansher Rafati, a PAK representative, told The Associated Press on Thursday.

Iranian media has previously accused the group and other Kurdish factions of attacking security forces.

Iranian activists say more than 2,797 people were killed in the government’s crackdown on a recent wave of nationwide protests.

A handful of Iranian Kurdish dissident or separatist groups — some with armed wings — have long found a safe haven in northern Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdish region, where their presence has been a point of friction between the central government in Baghdad and Tehran.

Iran has occasionally launched strikes on the groups’ sites in Iraq but has not done so since the outbreak of the recent protests.

The PAK is the first of the groups to claim armed operations since the protests and crackdown began.

“When we found out that the IRGC was shooting protesters directly, our fighters in Ilam, Kermanshah, and Firuzkuh responded with armed operations and inflicted significant damage on the regime’s forces,” Rafati said in an interview in Irbil, the capital of northern Iraq’s semiautonomous Kurdish region.

The PAK has also claimed a number of attacks online and posted video of what it said were operations against IRGC targets, sometimes accompanied by grainy videos showing gunshots or explosions and buildings ablaze. The AP was not able to confirm the extent of the damages or the impact of the attacks.

Rafati said the attacks were launched by members of the group’s National Army of Kurdistan military wing based inside Iran. The group had not sent any forces from Iraq, but it anticipates that Iran may strike PAK bases in Iraq in retaliation for its operations, he added.

He said the PAK has been providing support to dozens of Iranians who fled to the Kurdish area in Iraq since the crackdown on protests began.

The PAK claims may put Iraqi authorities in a sensitive situation with Tehran — which wields significant influence over its neighbor — concerning the group's ongoing presence in northern Iraq.

Iraq in 2023 reached an agreement with Iran to disarm Kurdish Iranian dissident groups and move them from their bases near the border areas into camps designated by Baghdad. The bases were shut down and movement within Iraq was restricted, but the groups have remained active.

During the Israel-Iran war last year, the PAK and other Kurdish dissident groups began organizing politically in case the authorities in Tehran should lose their hold on power but did not launch armed operations.

A PAK spokesperson told the AP at the time that premature armed mobilization could endanger the Kurdish groups and the fragile security of Kurdish areas, both in Iraq and across the border in Iran.

A decade ago, PAK forces received training from the U.S. military when they were taking part in the fight against the Islamic State militant group after it swept across Iraq and Syria, seizing large swathes of territory.

Ironically, the PAK at the time found itself allied with Iran-backed Shiite Iraqi militias that were also fighting against IS.

At that time, the PAK received funding from Iraq's Kurdish regional government, but says now that most of its funding comes from its supporters in Iran and the diaspora.

During the recent protests, Iranian state media has repeatedly referred to the demonstrators as “terrorists” and alleged they received support from America and Israel, without offering evidence to support the claim.

Iranian state television aired what appeared to be surveillance video of a group of men wearing the baggy pants common among the Kurds, firing pistols, in Iran’s western Kurdish region. It has also published images of seized weapons in the area.

The semiofficial Tasnim news agency, which is close to Iran's Revolutionary Guard, said Kurdish groups including the PAK “have played an active role in inciting these movements by issuing coordinated statements and messages.” It said that “groups based in northern Iraq have passed the stage of psychological warfare and media operations and have entered the field phase.”

The semiofficial Fars news agency, which is also close to the Revolutionary Guard, reported on Jan. 10 that another group — the Kurdistan Free Life Party, or PJAK — had killed eight Guard members in Kermanshah and that a PJAK sniper killed a police officer in Ilam province. PJAK has not claimed any armed operations during the protests.

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Associated Press writer Jon Gambrell in Dubai, United Arab Emirates, contributed to this report. Sewell reported from Beirut.

This image made from video shows the representative of the Kurdistan Freedom Party, Jwansher Rafati, speaking during an interview with The Associated Press, in Irbil, Iraq, Thursday, Jan. 15, 2026. (AP Photo/Farid Abdulwahed)