TEHRAN, Jul 18, 2011 (AFP) - Iran has taken "full control" of three camps of an Iranian Kurdish rebel movement inside neighbouring Iraq, a commander of the elite Revolutionary Guards told the official IRNA news agency on Monday.
The claims were disputed, however, by a top Iraqi Kurdish security official, and come a week after a senior Iranian army official said Tehran reserved the right to attack the bases of the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK) in Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region.
"All the three camps on Iraqi soil that were backing the terrorist group have fallen under our control and we have full control of the area," said Colonel Delavar Ranjbarzadeh, who commands Revolutionary Guards in the northwestern Iran border town of Sardasht.
He added that operations launched on Saturday inside Iraq were still continuing in other areas but he did not give more details.
Ranjbarzadeh added that a member of the Revolutionary Guards was killed in the fighting and three others wounded and that "many anti-revolutionary and PJAK terrorist members were (also) killed."
On Sunday, IRNA quoted an unnamed source in Sardasht as saying "five PJAK members were killed in the clashes."
"Among those killed is the deputy head of Marvan camp," Ranjbarzadeh said.
He described Marvan as the "main camp for the PJAK terrorist group," adding that 30 members of the group had lived there for the past four years.
According to Jabbar Yawar, the top official in the Iraqi Kurdish ministry responsible for the region's peshmerga security forces, the Iranian claim to have seized camps inside Iraq was "incorrect."
"All the combat (between the Iranian army and PJAK) has been inside Iranian territory," he told AFP in the Iraqi Kurdish regional capital Arbil.
On Sunday, a PJAK spokesman told AFP Iranian forces had suffered several casualties in the fighting near the Banjaween area of Iraqi Kurdistan's Sulaimaniyah province, and that two PJAK fighters had died.
Last week a senior Iranian army official said Tehran reserves the right to attack PJAK bases within Iraq.
"We reserve the right to attack and destroy terrorist bases in border areas" near the autonomous Iraqi region of Kurdistan, the official was quoted as saying by IRNA on July 11.
"The terrorists will not be allowed to take sanctuary in Iraq's territory and attack Iran with the support of America and the Zionist regime," the official said. "Action will be taken against these terrorists."
Iranian forces regularly shell border districts of Iraq's Kurdish region, targeting PJAK bases.
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Copyright AFP 2011.
