ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – Two Iranian border guards have been killed in separate clashes with “armed villains” in the Kurdish west of the country, a provincial border guard chief told state-affiliated media on Saturday night.
“One of the personnel… from the Urmia border unit called Ali Birami from … Ardabil province was martyred during clashes with villains last night,” Yahya Hosseinkhani, border guards commander for West Azerbaijan province told Mehr News.
On Friday, a soldier from the border unit for Sardasht, another town in the province was killed in a clash with smugglers, Hosseinkhani added, naming the soldier as Sasan Amirkhani.
Iranian security forces regularly clash with units of Kurdish opposition groups and arms smugglers in the west of the country. On October 4, a soldier from the border guard unit in Paveh, Kermanshah province was killed in clashes with adversaries termed "armed villains”.
According to Kurdish rights monitor Hengaw, last week also saw clashes between Iranian security forces and Kurdish opposition groups in Mariwan, Sanandaj and Kamyaran, all in the Kurdistan province of western Iran. On September 30, one member of the Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK) was killed in a clash with the Islamic Revolutionary Border Guards (IRGC) near the city of Kamyaran, PJAK announced on October 6.
As Iran battles both heavy economic pressure from Washington and world-stage isolation, the IRGC has tightened its grip on the country's restive border areas, with focus on its porous, mountainous border with the Kurdistan Region of Iraq.
Iran deploys tens of thousands of IRGC and regular border guards to Kurdish areas to fend off and clamp down on unrest. In September, Iran's border guard chief said Tehran would deploy drones and sensors to a 1,000 kilometre stretch of its border with Iraq, as part of a "smart" border defence plan to better seal its frontiers.
The defence plan seeks partly to prevent "illicit items from entering the country,” some of which is brought in by kolbars, porters who carry untaxed goods on their back. Several dozens of Kurdish kolbars are killed every year by Iranian security forces, Kurdish human rights groups have reported.
