Iran shells cross-border villages in Iraq

SULAIMANIYA / IraqiNews.com: Iranian heavy artillery pounded cross-border areas in Sulaimaniya province, but no casualties were reported, a senior official said on Thursday. “Heavy artillery shelling began last midnight and continued for an hour,” the director of Sulaimaniya’s Zarawa district, Ezad Wasso, told IraqiNews.com. The shelling targeted the areas of Razka, Mardo, Shanawa, and Arka, nearly 15 km from the Iraqi-Iranian borders, the director explained, noting that no casualties were reported. Iranian forces shell northern Iraqi areas under the pretext that they harbor 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 lead by an elected Executive Council. Led by Haji Ahmadi, the PJAK’s objective is to establish a semiautonomous 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. SS (S) 1