Peshmerga forces deny Iranian shelling on borders

ARBIL / IraqiNews.com: Peshmerga forces denied on Monday Iranian shelling of border regions in Kurdistan during the past two days. “Iranian forces did not shell border regions in the past two days and the shelling is suspended,” General Halukord Khedr, commander of the 43th unit of the Peshmerga forces, told IraqiNews.com news agency. Press reports had said on Monday that Iranian forces resumed shelling border regions in Kurdistan. The Iranian artillery have been shelling some border areas of Iraq under the pretext of attacking outposts of the anti-Iran militias PJAK, killing a Kurdish girl, wounding others and driving dozens of families out of their border villages. 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. SH (S) 2