Iran’s Tasnim news (close to the IRGC) cited an army public relations department statement which said the five militants were killed in an ambush in the Sardasht region.
“A five-member team of the terrorist group PJAK were identified in a region near Sardasht … and were all killed by the Revolutionary Guards army,” the IRGC’s statement read.
The statement went on to add that the militants the IRGC killed had assassinated two members of Iran’s paramilitary Basiji militia last month, in the border-city of Sardasht, along with an engineer who was working for the IRGC on “development projects” in border areas.
PJAK is believed to enjoy close ties with the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in Turkey and is focused on combating the regime in Iran.
PJAK and Tehran reached a ceasefire agreement back in 2011 after Iran agreed to stop executing Kurdish political prisoners if PJAK ceased its attacks.
This latest incident comes a week after the leader of Iran’s Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDPI), Khalid Azizi, told Rudaw in an interview that the main priority of his movement is not to overthrow the regime in Iran but to work with it in order to achieve rights for Iran’s Kurdish minority.
“Our duty is to make them negotiate with us. We have tried the monarchy in Iran as well as the Islamic governance. There are no guarantees that the government after this one would respect our rights and change their policies in that regard,” Azizi said.
