‘IRGC will wipe region clean of PJAK’

A senior Iranian commander announces that the fresh round of operations against the US, Israel- Backed Party for Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK) terrorist group is underway with force and decisiveness.

“The operation of the Ground Forces of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) against the positions of the PJAK terrorist group … started on Friday September 2,” IRNA cited IRGC Commander Colonel Hamid Ahmadi as saying on Sunday.

He went on to add that upon the request of Iraq’s Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG), the group was given a one-month grace period during the fasting month of Ramadan to retreat from the northwestern borders of the Islamic Republic and renounce acts of terror in these regions.

“But the PJAK terrorist group, in disregard of the KRG’s appeals and mediation, martyred two of the local Kurd forces … and this proved to the KRG that the terrorists had ignored its requests,” the colonel added.

Ahmadi said that around 30 terrorists had been killed or injured in the recent IRGC operations.

The Iranian commander added that in past weeks Iran had made arrangements for foreign and domestic journalists to visit the regions that were under terrorist occupation.

He also dismissed Western allegations that the KRG and the central Iraqi government had reacted against the fresh round of IRGC operations against PJAK.

Members of the PJAK terrorist 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 semi-autonomous Kurdistan region.

Iran has recently deployed 5,000 military forces in the northwest of the country, along its common border with the Iraqi Kurdistan region, to fight counterrevolutionary groups.