Kurdish fighters attack three Iranian bases with RPGs, grenades

ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – The Eastern Kurdistan Defenders (EKD) announced on Friday that its fighters had conducted a coordinated attack on three military bases in Iranian Kurdistan (Rojhilat).

The attacks were carried out in the Kurdish city of Oshanvieh (Shino) on Thursday night, the guerrilla group said in a statement published on the official website of the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI). 

The EKD is affiliated to the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Iran (HDK), which split from the PDKI in 2006.

According to the account given in the statement, the operation took place at 10:00 pm local time when an unspecified number of EKD fighters attacked three Iranian military bases simultaneously with RPGs and grenades. The bases were identified as Shakirabad, Tachinawe, and Zeme.

The statement said that the group did not yet have details about the number of Iranian military casualties sustained in the operation.

Local media reports in Iran reported that, following the attack, fire erupted in several parts of Shino. In their statement, the EKD accused local government forces, backed by the Iranian military, of burning the area following the attacks. Notable among the areas affected is the graveyard of Sultan Mustafa in Shino.

The Iranian military has yet to confirm or deny the incidents.

PDKI attacks on Iranian forces have recently been on the rise. On Sunday, they claimed to have killed a commander of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) after engaging the Iranian Kurdish Peshmerga fighters near the city of Piranshahr.

The group also announced on June 8 that they had killed nine and wounded 18 members of the IRGC in Shino's Siakew Mountain.

The PDKI reignited a conflict with the Islamic Republic in June 2016, 20 years after laying down their weapons in 1996 to prevent jeopardizing Kurdish gains made in northern Iraq.

Editing by John J. Catherine