ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – No group has claimed responsibility so far for five soldiers from Iran’s Revolutionary Guards who were killed last week near the Kurdish city of Baneh.
The attack took place between the Kurdish villages of Shiwe and Sawan, where unknown gunmen attacked the guards, killing five and wounding two others. The guards were of Kurdish origin, according to local sources.
Over the past six months there have been four attacks on the Revolutionary Guards in the country’s Kurdish areas.
Before last week’s attack, the last took place in August, when the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK) claimed responsibility for killing seven Revolutionary Guards.
Unofficial sources inside the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI) say that their agents inside Iran were behind the latest attack.
Omar Balaki, a member of KDPI’s political bureau, refused to deny or confirm his party’s involvement in the attack. “For three decades the Kurdish areas have been treated as a military zone, so it is natural to see incidents like this,” he said.
Recently, the KDPI said that it had sent groups of fighters into Iran.
Most Iranian Kurdish groups have given up armed struggle against Tehran in pursuit of Kurdish rights, but in a recent interview with Rudaw KDPI head Khalid Azizi said that some voices within his party are calling for the resumption of armed struggle against the Islamic Republic.
Iranian military officials in the Kurdish areas have not accused any particular group for the latest attack but Muhammad Taqi Osanlu, the commander of the Hamza Base in western Iran, said, “The anti-revolutionaries carried out this attack to show that the area is unstable.”
Some Kurdish activists believe such violent attacks are detrimental to the Kurdish cause in Iran, especially at a time when the country’s new President Hassan Rouhani has pledged to grant the Kurds more rights.
“There are some people who live on instability,” Jalal Jalalizadeh, a former Kurdish MP in the Iranian parliament, told Rudaw. “Such attacks are not in the best interests of the Kurdish people.”
Jalalizadeh said such attacks complicate the situation for Kurdish officials who try to get into government posts and run the region’s affairs.
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