Child killed, parents wounded in Iranian shelling north of Sulaimaniya

SULAIMANIYA / IraqiNews.com: A child was killed and his parents were wounded when the Iranian artillery shelled a border village in north of Sulaimaniya city, the director of the Zarawa district said on Wednesday. “The Iranian artillery shelled Razka village in Zarawa district, north of Qalaat Daza, on Tuesday night (March 10), killing a two-year child and injuring his parents,” Azad Waso told IraqiNews.com news agency. “The mother’s condition is stable but the father is in critical condition,” he noted. The Iranian army is shelling these areas under the pretext they harbor the PJAK fighters. The PJAK, or the Partiya Jiyana Azad a Kurdistanê (Party of Free Life of Kurdistan), is a militant Kurdish nationalist group based in northern Iraq that has been carrying out attacks in the Kurdistan Province of Iran and other Kurdish-inhabited areas. PJAK is a member of the Kurdistan Democratic Confederation (Koma Civakên Kurdistan or KCK), which is an alliance of outlawed Kurdish groups and divisions led by an elected Executive Council. The Kurdistan Workers Party (KK) is listed as a terrorist organization internationally by a number of states and organizations, including the United States, NATO and the EU, and is also a member of KCK. Led by Haji Ahmadi, the PJAK’s objective is to establish a semi-autonomous regional entities or Kurdish federal states in Iran, Turkey and Syria similar to the Kurdistan Regional Government Kurdistan RegionG) in Iraq. The PJAK, an Iranian Kurdish party that broke away from the PKK, or Partiya Karekeren Kurdistan in Kurdish, in 2004 after the imprisonment of PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan, started its armed struggle against the regime in Iran with the aim of building a federacy for Iran’s Kurdistan. The PJAK has about 3,000 armed militiamen. SH (S) 2