Erbil, Kurdistan Region – At least two members of Iran’s security forces were killed and two others wounded when a checkpoint near the Kurdish city of Baneh in western Iran came under attack on Friday night.
The clashes occurred at a joint checkpoint outside Baneh in Kurdistan province, where members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), police, and Ministry of Intelligence personnel control entry and exit points to the city.
“Sergeant First Class Mohammad Hassan-Beigi and conscript Martin Ahadi were killed in the incident,” Kurdistan province police said, according to Iranian state media, adding that two civilians were also wounded in the clashes.
It was not immediately clear which Kurdish opposition group was involved. The Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK), however, said its forces had come under attack three times in the area on Thursday.
The clashes came around the same time that US Central Command struck Iranian positions near the Strait of Hormuz following IRGC drone attacks on a vessel.
The bases of several Kurdish opposition groups active in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq have come under hundreds of missile and drone attacks since February 28, when the US and Israel launched a preemptive aerial bombardment of Iran that lasted nearly six weeks. The parties agreed to a fragile ceasefire on April 8 before later reaching a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to extend the truce for another two months.
Despite the MoU, there have been several flare-ups between the IRGC and CENTCOM in the Strait of Hormuz over control of the strategic waterway.
"Iran signed a ceasefire agreement. We have honored it. If they have disagreements about how the MOU is being applied, they can pick up the phone," US Vice President JD Vance posted on X in response to other Iranian drone attacks on commercial vessels. "But violence will be met with violence."
His statement came after Iranian forces launched multiple drone attacks on a commercial vessel on Thursday.
Iran has also continued to strike the Kurdish opposition groups in the Kurdistan Region in Iraq externing pressure on Baghdad and Erbil to disarm the groups or expel them from their territory.
Friday night’s attack on the checkpoint near Baneh marks the first major clash between Kurdish opposition groups and Iranian security forces since the beginning of the war in late February.
