ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — At least 200 smugglers attacked a Kurdistan Region border post with Iran in the early hours of Tuesday, according to local security officials, with one smuggler killed and four border guards wounded in the resulting clashes.
The deadly nighttime clash began when border guards in Sargat refused exit to smugglers on the grounds of measures to combat spread of the coronavirus.
"At 1:15 am, more than 200 smugglers who have long been trying to cross into Iran, which we have not allowed due to coronavirus, attacked our border post in Sargat," Fakhraddin Abdulla, commander of Sulaimani Border Brigade 3 told Rudaw English.
"So they burned the border post, smashed the windows and fired on our guards. Our forces responded instantly. As a result of the skirmish, a smuggler was killed and four of our guards were wounded," Abdulla said.
"They have been pressuring us to open the borders, but we cannot do it because we simply do not let them mix with the people of Iran, because of the extent of coronavirus in Iran," he added.
Iran was the Middle Eastern epicenter of the COVID-19 virus early on in the outbreak. The country has so far recorded over 200,000 cases of the virus, and almost 10,000 related deaths.
The KRG has taken stringent measures since late February to prevent smugglers from criss-crossing the border in a bid to curb the spread of the virus. The Kurdistan Region's borders have remained open only for commercial traffic.
Abdulla said that the smugglers were mostly being used to transport "mobile phones, TVs, household appliances and tobacco" from the Region to neighboring Iran.
"The safety of our people comes first. So long as the danger of this pandemic exists, we will continue to block anyone from trying to come in or move from here to Iran," he added.
However, a resident from the village of Hanai Dn, less than a kilometer away from Sargat, told Rudaw English that the commotion started after a large number of smugglers descended on the border guards' outpost "because their loads had been seized."
"The border guards had told the smugglers not to smuggle goods in these times [during the pandemic], but the smugglers who carry their goods on mules went ahead and did it anyway," the resident who spoke on condition of anonymity, said.
"The loud row between the smugglers and the border guards continued for half an hour before breaking into huge gunfire...in the mayhem, one man was killed."
Brig. Gen. Kazim Abdulla, head of Halabja province police told Rudaw English that the slain smuggler, identified as Saiwan Banishari, had been transferred to Halabja morgue.
The Halabja public prosecutor has issued an arrest warrant for the border guards who fired on the smugglers, Abdulla said.
He added that all those who attacked the border post were Kurds from the town of Khurmal, 20 kilometers northeast of the city of Halabja.
Goods carried by smugglers to the Kurdistan Region-Iran border are often taken up by kolbars, who trek the rugged mountains to carry them either on their backs or on colts through the Kurdish region of Iran. Many are pushed into the dangerous profession by poverty and lack of employment alternatives.
Monitors estimate around 70,000 people, mostly Iranian Kurds, make a living as kolbars.
