Iraqi Kurdish government condemns separatist attacks on Iran

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.