ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - An Iranian border guard was killed on Thursday by shots fired from “unidentified people” near Baneh along the western border with the Kurdistan Region, Iranian media reported, claiming the shots were fired from within the Region. “Following the shooting by unknown people at the guard tower in Baneh border regiment, the conscript Farzin Delian from Kermanshah was martyred,” Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency, affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), said on Telegram. Tasnim said the shots came from “unspecified positions” on the Kurdistan Region’s side of the border, and that investigations have been launched into the shooting. While no party has claimed responsibility for the shooting, a number of Iranian-Kurdish opposition groups based in the Kurdistan Region – namely the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI), Komala, Free Life Party of Kurdistan (PJAK), and the Kurdistan Freedom Party (PAK) – have fought an on-and-off war with the Islamic republic in the struggle for greater Kurdish rights. A security pact signed between Iran and Iraq in March 2023 saw Baghdad agree to disarm Kurdish opposition groups and secure the border regions. Iran had threatened to use military action if Baghdad failed to fulfill the agreement. In September, Baghdad announced that it had disarmed the exiled Kurdish groups on the border and that offices previously used by the groups had been evacuated. Since the 1980s, the Iran-Iraq-Turkey triangle border has been plagued by conflict and instability. Tehran and Ankara have both fought Kurdish groups in the mountainous areas. Some 500 villages have been emptied, farmlands and orchards destroyed, and civilians caught in the crossfire.
