ERBIL, Kurdistan Region — Two members of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) were killed in clashes with armed opposition groups in western Iran on Wednesday night, media affiliated with the forces reported. “At 20:05 last night, the local [IRGC] forces clashed with anti-revolutionary elements,” the IRGC's Hamza Sayyid al-Shuhada command center responsible for the Kurdish areas in west of the country said in a statement published in the semi-official news outlet Tasnim, noting that two of its forces and two opposition group members were killed in the altercation. The IRGC refers to a multitude of Kurdish opposition groups based mostly in the Kurdistan region as “anti revolutionary” and to its members as “soldiers of Islam.” Clashes often occur between Kurdish opposition groups and Iranian security forces, and in particular the IRGC, on a regular basis. Iran often shells the border areas after clashes causing damage to the local environment and Kurdish civilians living nearby. In recent years the IRGC has taken increasingly proactive measures to smother clandestine Kurdish opposition groups by making thousands of kilometers of new dirt roads atop mountain peaks overlooking Kurdish areas, installing thousands of additional troops to seal off its porous western border with Iraq. The armed opposition party Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (KDPI), which is based in the Kurdistan Region of Iraq, on Saturday said an IRGC commander had been killed by affiliate group the Zagros Eagles.
