Civilian wounded in Iranian shelling of border areas in Sulaimaniya

SULAIMANIYA / IraqiNews.com: A shepherd was wounded in Iranian artillery shelling of villages in the district of Zarawa, northern Qalaat Daza area, non-stop for six days now, the district chief said on Friday. “The shelling intensified on Friday afternoon on the villages of Razka, Mardo, Shanawa, and Sbeilka, leaving a shepherd in the area slightly wounded,” Azad Wasso told IraqiNews.com. “The shelling is continuing in the area to create a state of panic and instability for the local residents there,” he added. Iranian forces shell northern Iraqi areas under the pretext that they harbor the fighters of the PJAK, or the Partiya Jiyana Azad a Kurdistanê (Party of Free Life of Kurdistan), 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. 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, has 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. Sualimaniya, one of the Kurdistan RegionG’s three cities, lies 364 km north of the Iraqi capital Baghdad. AmR (S) 1