Ibril, northern Iraq - Following Iranian shelling, the
government of the semi-autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq on
Thursday condemned Kurdish guerrilla attacks on Iranian forces near
the Iraqi-Iranian border.
Iranian forces periodically bombard the Iraqi side of the
mountainous, Kurdish region straddling the border between the two
countries with artillery, hunting Kurdish separatist guerrillas from
the Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan (PJAK).
On Thursday local security officials Azad Wusu and Abdallah
Ibrahim told the Kurdish news agency AKA news that Iranian forces had
fired artillery shells at villages hugging the side of Mount Qandil,
on the Iraqi side of the border.
The shells 'caused material damage only,' Ibrahim said.
The northern Iraqi Kurdish government on Thursday distanced itself
from the PJAK attacks.
'These attacks by the PJAK against the Islamic Republic of Iran
are in no one's interest,' the Kurdish government said in an official
statement released Thursday. 'We are the government of the region of
Kurdistan, and we condemn these attacks.'
Iran's shelling of Kurdish separatists coincided with a Turkish
air raid targeting suspected Kurdish rebel positions in northern Iraq
late Wednesday night and Thursday morning, the Turkish military
confirmed.
In a short statement posted on its website, the Turkish General
Staff said warplanes had bombed the banned Kurdish Workers' Party
(PKK) positions in the Zap and Avasin-Basyan regions of northern
Iraq.
According to the statement the air strikes were successful, and
all planes had safely returned to their bases.
The bombing raids came a day after nine Turkish soldiers were
killed in a roadside bomb explosion in the south-eastern province of
Diyarbakir. The PKK later claimed responsibility for that attack.
During Turkish President Abdullah Gul's March visit to Iraq, Iraqi
President Jalal Talabani, himself an ethnic Kurd, promised Iraq's
help in disarming or ejecting the PKK from the semi-autonomous
Kurdish region of northern Iraq.
'The Constitution prohibits the presence of armed groups on Iraqi
soil, including the PKK,' he said. 'Either they will put down their
weapons, or they will leave our soil.'
Talabani and Gul said they would continue to hold three-way talks
with the United States to discuss disarming the PKK.
The Turkish military estimates there are up to 5,000 PKK fighters
who use camps in mountainous northern Iraq from which they organize
and launch attacks on Turkey.
Ankara blames the separatist group for the deaths of more than
35,000 people since the early 1980s when the PKK began its fight for
independence or autonomy for the predominantly Kurdish south-east of
Turkey.
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