Iran has confirmed for the first time that it has been firing artillery shells on Kurdish militant camps inside northern Iraq, saying local authorities had not listened to its warnings. The militant Kurdish separatist group Party of Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK) — linked to Turkeyy’s outlawed Kurdistan Workers Party — has been behind a string of deadly attacks on security forces in northwestern Iran in recent months. “Some of their bases are 10 kilometres inside Iraqi territory so this is part of our natural right to secure our borders,” said General Yayha Rahim Safavi, military advisor to the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.Iraq warned: “Of course we issued warnings to the Iraqi government and told them to take them [the rebels] away from the border and respect its obligations,” Safavi said in an interview with Iran’s English language channel Press TV late Saturday. “But unfortunately the Kurdistan region, the northern part of Iraq, did not listen, so we feel entitled to target military bases of PJAK and they have been under our artillery fire,” he added, according to the channel’s English translation.
Safavi, the former head of the elite Revolutionary Guards, gave no details of when the firing had taken place or if it was continuing. Iraqi Kurdish officials said last month that hundreds of Iraqi Kurds had fled villages near the eastern frontier after Iranian gunners targeted separatist guerrilla bases.