Fighters from the Kurdish Democratic Party of Iran clashed with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, with both sides claiming to have inflicted casualties.
The fighting along Iran’s border with Iraq has raised ethnic tensions in the Kurdish region, an area that Kurdish separatists have been striving to make independent for decades, reports the New York Times.
The region was visited by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani earlier this month, who said that “the mother tongue of ethnic groups, especially of Kurds, should be respected and recognized,” as he pledged to open new language centres.
Iran’s Guard Corps base in the region, Hamzeh Seyyed ol-Shohada, said that a number of “terrorists linked to counterrevolutionary groups” had been killed in the clashes.
“The operation is underway for the destruction of the remaining terrorists,” the statement said.
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