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 SULAIMANIYA,
Iraq, April 21 (Reuters) - Iranian forces shelled Iranian Kurdish guerrilla
positions inside mountainous northern Iraq early Friday morning to repel an
attack, an Iraqi Kurdish official said.
"This morning Iranian Kurdish fighters infiltrated the border into the
Iranian side and the Iranian army bombed the area and repelled them. The
shelling hit Iraqi land at Sidakan," said Saadi Pira, an official in the
leading PUK Kurdish party.
There was no word on casualties in the shelling of the Iranian Kurdish rebels
of the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK). Sidakan
is about 80 km (50 miles) north of the northern Iraqi city of Arbil and about 10 km (6
miles) inside Iraq
from the Iranian border.
Iran's Revolutionary Guards
have previously clashed with PJAK separatists in Iran's restive western
borderlands.
Security experts say PJAK is an Iranian wing of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK)
whose separatist struggle regained momentum in southeastern Turkey after
it called off a unilateral ceasefire in the summer of 2004.
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