Iran shells Kurd positions in Iraq-Kurd official

Reuters: Iranian forces shelled Iranian Kurdish guerrilla positions inside mountainous northern Iraq early Friday morning to repel an attack, an Iraqi Kurdish official said. SULAIMANIYA, Iraq, April 21 (Reuters) – Iranian forces shelled Iranian Kurdish guerrilla positions inside mountainous northern Iraq early Friday morning to repel an attack, an Iraqi Kurdish official said.

“This morning Iranian Kurdish fighters infiltrated the border into the Iranian side and the Iranian army bombed the area and repelled them. The shelling hit Iraqi land at Sidakan,” said Saadi Pira, an official in the leading PUK Kurdish party.

There was no word on casualties in the shelling of the Iranian Kurdish rebels of the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK). Sidakan is about 80 km (50 miles) north of the northern Iraqi city of Arbil and about 10 km (6 miles) inside Iraq from the Iranian border.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards have previously clashed with PJAK separatists in Iran’s restive western borderlands.

Security experts say PJAK is an Iranian wing of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) whose separatist struggle regained momentum in southeastern Turkey after it called off a unilateral ceasefire in the summer of 2004.