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Iranian official says Iran has shelled
Iraqi Kurdistan
25.9.2007
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In
first confirmation, Iranian official says Iran has
shelled Kurdish guerrilla in Iraqi Kurdistan region.
September
25, 2007
TEHRAN, Iran,-- Iranian forces have fired
artillery against Kurdish PEJAK guerrilla positions
in Iraqi Kurdistan border areas, a state-owned
newspaper reported Tuesday in the first Iranian
confirmation of the shelling.
Quoting the former chief of Iran's elite
Revolutionary Guard, the IRAN daily said Iran
considers shelling the guerrilla its right in order
to protect its security.
"In some cases, military forces have barraged bases
of the PEJAK group, the opposition Kurdish
guerrilla, in Iraq's soil," IRAN quoted General
Yahya Rahim Safavi as saying.
"Some bases of Pejak are in 10 kilometers away from
the Iranian border in Iraqi soil. Providing security
in the borders is a natural right of Iran," Safavi
was quoted as saying.
Iran repeatedly has said the PEJAK, or Free Life
Party of Kurdistan and a breakaway faction of the
separatist Kurdistan Workers' Party, also known as
PKK, have regularly launched attacks inside Iran
from bases in Iraq in the Qandil Mountain area that
borders Iran and Turkey.
Since
2004 PEJAK took up arms for self-rule in the
country's mainly Kurdistan province northwestern of
Iran. Half the members of PEJAK are women.
The remarks by Safavi was the first official
confirmation that Iranian forces have shelled Iraqi
territory.
In August, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari
strongly criticized Iranian artillery and warned
that it would negatively effect relations between
the two neighboring countries.
Earlier reports from Kurdistan 'northern Iraq' said
that villagers in border areas in the provinces of
Sulaimaniyah and Erbil had been fleeing their homes
as a result of Iranian shelling.
Since the U.S.-led liberation of Iraq and the
collapse of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in
2003, the Iraqi government has had good relations
with Iran.
The two countries experienced an eight year war,
launched by Iraq in 1980 that left 1 million killed
on both sides.
AP
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