“Heavy clashes erupted” between PDKI Peshmerga and the Iranian forces in a park outside of Paveh, Kermanshah province, the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI) stated Friday evening.
“The IRGC used heavy weapons in its attack on the Peshmerga unit,” the PDKI stated.
The Kurdish forces said they defeated the Iranian troops after a three hour-long battle. They claimed to have killed at least three of the IRGC and reported the deaths of two of their own ranks – named as Shaho Waisi and Zanyar Islami.
Kurdish human rights monitor Hengaw said the clashes broke out in the Shaho mountains near Paveh. The organization confirmed the casualties.
A civilian who was in the park was also reportedly killed in the clash, identified as Farshad Chachani. The PDKI said Chachani was killed by the Iranian forces.
Authorities, however, have blamed his death on the Peshmerga.
“Farshad’s elder brother was summoned by the intelligence office and was asked to tell the people his brother was killed by PDKI Peshmerga forces,” sources told Hengaw.
Iranian forces recently conducted war games in the Shaho mountain area where Friday’s clashes took place. Large numbers of Iranian forces from multiple branches of the military participated in a week of military drills that Kurds feared could be used as a pretext for an attack.
Death sentence in crackdown on PDKI
PDKI is one of several armed Kurdish groups opposed to the Iranian regime. Iran fired missiles at their headquarters in the Kurdistan Region’s Koya last month.
Chief of staff of Iran’s armed forces, Maj. Gen. Mohammad Hossein Bagheri, visited Kermanshah province this week. He told reporters that Erbil and Baghdad must do more to stop the Kurdish parties from launching cross-border attacks.
“Neighbouring countries such as Iraq, including the Kurdistan Region and the central government, are bound by international law and neighbourly duties to take action against anti-revolution groups,” he said, according to Tasnim news.
This week, an Iranian court upheld a death sentence for a Kurdish car mechanic on a charge of cooperating with the PDKI. The sentence was confirmed despite the defendant’s innocence because of pressure to crackdown on the Kurdish party, according to the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI).
Hedayat Abdollahpour was arrested in June 2016 after he was called to repair the brakes of a car that had broken down in a village nearby where PDKI Peshmerga were clashing with Iranian forces.
“When he got there, he unknowingly found himself in the middle of a clash. He repaired the car and left the area and according to eyewitnesses, he played no role in the clash,” his lawyer Hossein Ahmadiniaz told CHRI.
The court new Abdollahpour was innocent, but convicted him anyway because authorities want to compel the people to distance themselves from the PDKI and other Kurdish parties, the lawyer said.
The “judicial process in these cases is unfair and the verdicts are primarily aimed at silencing the people in the region and discouraging them from joining protests and forcing them to take a stronger stand against Kurdish groups,” he said.
