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| Iraq |
| Iraqi and Iranian soldiers trade fire on border |
| 2010-05-14 |
| [Al Arabiya Latest] Iraqi border guards exchanged fire with Iranian troops along the two countries' border Thursday, the first major incident between the two since Iran took over a disputed oil well in December. An Iraqi officer was captured by the Islamic Republic's forces in the 90-minute gunfight on the border with Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region, which was apparently sparked when Iranian troops mistook Iraqi soldiers for a Kurdish rebel group. "Iranian forces thought that the border guards belonged to PJAK (the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan -- an Iranian Kurdish rebel group) and started to open fire," Brigadier General Ahmed Gharib Diskara, the head of Iraq's border guards in Sulaimaniyah province, told reporters. "The border guards shot back and one officer of the Iraqi army has been captured. Negotiations are ongoing to free him." There was no immediate comment from Iran. Gharib said the shooting took place in a mountainous part of the two countries' border known as Shamiran, 90 kilometers (55 miles) southeast of Sulaimaniyah, the Iraqi Kurdistan's second-biggest city. PJAK is a Kurdish rebel group in Iran's northwest. It is closely allied with the Kurdistan Workers' Party, or PKK, which operates in Turkey and is listed as a "terrorist" group by Ankara and much of the international community. The last incident along the Iran-Iraq border was in December, when Iranian forces took control of an Iraqi oil well on disputed territory, but there were no clashes and the Iranian forces eventually withdrew. Under executed president Saddam Hussein's Sunni-led regime, Tehran and Baghdad fought a devastating 1980-1988 war in which around one million people were killed. Relations between Baghdad and Tehran have warmed considerably since the 2003 overthrow of Saddam by U.S.-led forces, although many of Iraq's Sunni Arabs continue to eye Iran with suspicion. |
| Posted by:Fred |