IRGC Not to Stop Operations against PJAK Headquarters

A senior official of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps stressed that unless the forces of Iraq’s central government are deployed at the Iran-Iraq borders, the IRGC will not stop its operations against the headquarters of the PJAK (the Party for Free Life of Kurdistan) terrorist group.
“By deploying the security and military forces of the central government or the Kurdistan region to the joint border of Iran and Iraq’s Kurdistan, Iraq’s government must accept the responsibility of guarding common borders,” a military official of IRGC’s Hamzeh Seyed al-Shohada base said on Wednesday.

The official added that an area inside Iraqi soil has been given to the PJAK by Iraq’s semi- autonomous Kurdistan region without receiving permission from the country’s central government.

“Under pressure from this terrorist group, Iraqi people have been deprived of their rights to live and use the land and resources near the borderline,” the source said.

The Iranian official also noted that in the operations of the IRGC against the PJAK group during past weeks, more than 50 members of the counterrevolutionary forces have been killed, 100 others injured, and a number of them have been captured.

The IRGC has deployed 5,000 military forces in the northwest of the country along its common border with Iraq’s Kurdistan, and has been fighting the PJAK terrorist group over the past weeks in order to establish security and stabilize the area.

On July 25, Iranian forces killed 35 PJAK members, captured a number of others and took control of the terrorist group’s bases in the heights of Sardasht near Iran’s border with Iraq.

In an operation on July 20, IRGC forces also killed a number of PJAK terrorists, and forced a group of them to escape.

On July 17, the IRGC disbanded a terrorist cell linked to PJAK, killing at least five members of the group.

Members of the terrorist PJAK group – an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) – regularly engage in armed clashes with Iranian security forces along the country’s Western borders with Iraq’s Kurdistan region.

Recognized as a terrorist group by Turkey, Iran, Iraq, the United States, the European Union, and the United Nations, the PKK is responsible for many deadly operations in Northern Iraq and Southern Turkey.