At around 3pm Friday afternoon, Iranian Revolutionary Guards started shelling the border area.
"The shelling continued for 20 minutes with no casualties,” Farzang Ahmad, the mayor of Haji Omran, told Rudaw.
“The shelling targeted areas near two villages of Choman and as a result the local shepherds evacuated the nearby mountains," Ahmad added.
The Choman area is in eastern Erbil province, along the border with Iran. It is about 100km east of the capital Erbil.
Ahmed Qadir, the mayor of Choman, said the shelling was far from the urban centre, but “targeted places near the house of a local shepherd. And this has worried other local shepherds.”
Video shared by Hengaw human rights agency appears to show people panicking because of shelling in the Choman area.
One of the armed parties, the PDKI, has had several deadly clashes with security forces in Iran in June and July.
Iran has shelled areas inside the Kurdistan Region on several occasions on the pretext of the presence of armed Kurdish groups on its border.
In June, a delegation from Iran’s consul general in Erbil delivered a formal complaint to the KRG about the movement of “terrorists” across their shared border.
The KRG has repeatedly stressed its desire to be a good neighbour and to not get involved in the struggles of Kurdish populations outside of its own borders. It also has said it does not support any group that uses Kurdistan Region territory to launch attacks on neighbouring countries.
Iranian and Turkish military operations within the Kurdistan Region borders are also a factor in devastating wildfires.
