Iran claims to have taken control of three Kurdish rebel camps in Iraq

SARA GHASEMILEE, Al Arabiya with Agencies

Iran has taken “full control” of three camps of the Iranian Kurdish rebel PJAK movement inside neighboring
Iraq, a commander of the elite Revolutionary Guards told the official IRNA news agency on Monday. “All the three camps on Iraqi soil that were backing the terrorist group have fallen under our control and we have full control of the area,” said Colonel Delavar Ranjbarzadeh, who commands Revolutionary Guards in the northwestern Iran border town of Sardasht. He added that operations launched on Saturday inside Iraq were still continuing in other areas but he did not give more details.

Colonel Ranjbarzadeh added that a member of the Revolutionary Guards was killed in the fighting and three others wounded and that “many anti-revolutionary and PJAK terrorist members were (also) killed.”

On Sunday IRNA quoted an unnamed source in Sardasht as saying “five PJAK members were killed in the clashes.”

“Among those killed, is the deputy head of Marvan camp,” Colonel Ranjbarzadeh said.

He described Marvan as the “main camp for the PJAK terrorist group,” adding that 30 members of the group had been living there for the past four years.

On Sunday a spokesman for the PJAK told AFP in Iraq that Iranian forces had suffered several casualties in the fighting near the Banjaween area of Iraq Kurdistan’s Sulaimaniyah province.

“Since midnight (2100 GMT Saturday), heavy battles have been ongoing between PJAK and the Iranian army, resulting in two killed and four wounded,” said PJAK spokesman Sherzad Kamankar.

Last week a senior army official said Tehran “reserves the right” to attack the bases of the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK), in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdish region.

“The terrorists will not be allowed to take sanctuary in Iraq’s territory and attack Iran with the support of America and the Zionist regime,” the official said. “Action will be taken against these terrorists.”

Iranian forces regularly shell border districts of Iraq’s Kurdish region, targeting PJAK bases.

The senior Iranian military official also accused Masoud Barzani, the Kurdistan president, of “giving 300,000 hectares of land to the PJAK terrorist group without the knowledge of the central government in Baghdad.”

Party of Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK), an offshoot of the Turkey-based Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), took up arms in 1984 for an ethnic homeland in southeast Turkey and northwest Iran.

Like Iraq and Turkey, Iran has a large Kurdish minority, mainly living in northwest and western areas of the Islamic Republic.

Iran and Iraq fought an eight-year war in the 1980s, but since the overthrow in 2003 of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, a Sunni, relations between majority Shiite Iraq and predominantly Shiite Iran have improved.

Iran is at odds with the United States and its allies over its nuclear program, which the West says is a cover for building nuclear bombs.
Tehran denies the allegation, saying it needs nuclear technology to generate electricity for its growing population.

(Sara Ghasemilee, a senior editor at Al Arabiya English, can be reached at: sara.ghasemilee@mbc.net)