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Details about Iranian cross-border into
Iraqi Kurdistan are sketchy
24.8.2007
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August
24, 2007
Sulaimaniyah, Kurdistan region (Iraq), --
Iranian soldiers crossed into Iraq on Thursday and
attacked several small villages in the northeastern
Kurdistan region, local officials said.
U.S. military spokesman Lt. Col. Christopher Garver
said he couldn't confirm the attacks, but five
Kurdish officials said that troops had infiltrated
Iraqi territory and fired on villages.
The Iranian military regularly exchanges artillery
and rocket fire with Kurdish rebels who've taken
refuge across the border, but Iraqi Kurdish
officials worried that Iran's willingness to cross
the border raises the possibility of a broader
confrontation that would draw the Iraqi government
and U.S. forces into an unwanted showdown.
One Kurdish legislator said that if reports of the
attacks were true, then Iraq must "stand firmly"
against future Iranian encroachments.
Details of the incursion were sparse. Abdul Wahid
Gwany, the mayor of Choman, a village in Kurdistan
region 250 miles north of Baghdad , said
Iranian troops crossed
the border in 10 places and traveled approximately
three miles into the mountainous Iraqi Kurdistan
region, bombing rural villages in the process. He
didn't say how many Iranian troops were involved.
Jamal Ahmed , the police chief of Benjawin, a
village a little more than 200 miles north of
Baghdad , said the attacks killed some residents.
"We don't know the amount of casualties as the
bombing was continuous and so severe," Ahmed said.
Gwany said the attacks also killed many cattle and
left villages and farms burned to the ground.
Gen. Jabbar Yawr , a spokesman for the Kurdish
militia, said Iranian troops have been lobbing
artillery at Iraq from across the border since Aug.
16 , though Thursday was the first time that Iranian
troops crossed the border.
He said that a statement issued by the PEJAK (Party
of Free Life of Kurdistan) , a branch of the
Kurdistan Workers Party , which is also known as the
PKK, claimed credit for the recent assassination of
an Iranian intelligence official. Yawr said the
Iranian raid was in retaliation.
PEJAK, took up
arms for self-rule in the country's mainly Kurdistan
province northwestern of Iran. Half the members of
PEJAK are Kurdish women.
Ethnic Kurds make up much of semi-autonomous
northern Iraq and also populate large swaths of Iran
, Turkey and Syria . Kurdish separatist rebels, who
have sought to establish their own independent
state, have long been at odds with all three
countries.
Mahmoud Othman , a Kurdish member of the Iraqi
parliament, said he hadn't heard about Iranian
soldiers crossing the border, but that if they had,
"then this is open intervention. Iraq should stand
firmly against it."
Hiwa Osman , the spokesman for Iraqi Vice President
Jalal Talabani , a Kurd who heads the Patriotic
Union of Kurdistan , or PUK, said he had heard about
Iranian troops crossing the border, but that
"details are sketchy."
"It seems something is taking place," he said. "It's
definitely seen as a violation of Iraqi
sovereignty."
Yawr said PUK sent a letter to Tehran demanding that
it rein in its troops. He said representatives from
the political party went to Baghdad on Thursday to
lobby for the Iraqi government's help.
Meanwhile, Brig. Gen. Ahmed Ghareeb , the chief
commander of Kurdistan border guards in the
Sulaimaniyah region, where some of the attacks
occurred, said he has asked U.S.-led coalition
forces to help protect the border.
"We told them about this matter and we asked them to
stop it immediately," he said.
The U.S. military didn't respond to questions about
Ghareeb's assertions.
MCT
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