“Two rebels who were involved in the attack on 4 Farvardin (March 25) were killed in the northwest of the country,” said General Mohammad Pakpour, without specifying the political affiliation of the two or the circumstances of their deaths, the official IRNA news agency reported.
IRNA, however, quoted an unnamed informed source as saying the two were killed on Monday.
On March 25, two members of the security forces were killed in two armed attacks in Sanandaj, capital of Iran’s Kurdistan province bordering Iraq.
Another official, border guards commander General Hossein Zolfaghari, reported four “armed clashes” in the west, including three with “terrorist groups” and one with arms dealers, the ISNA news agency said on Monday.
Zolfaghari also confirmed that four border guards were killed in clashes with a “terrorist” group in the Marivan region near the Iraqi border, as first reported by the Mehr news agency on Sunday.
“All signs indicate that these actions were carried out by the terrorist group PJAK (Party of Free Life of Kurdistan)” which is banned by the Iranian government and linked to the PKK in Turkey.
Western Iran, which has a sizeable Kurdish minority, has seen deadly clashes in recent years between security forces and rebel groups operating from bases in neighbouring Iraq and Turkey.
