Iran Continues Shelling Kurds In Iraqi Territory

A senior Iraqi Kurdish official has said that Iran is shelling border villages in northern Iraq despite a warning by the Iraqi government to desist, RFE/RL's Radio Free Iraq (RFI) reports.

Jabbar Yawer, a spokesman for the Peshmerga forces of the Kurdish autonomous region, told RFI that as of May 6 Iranian forces continued to shell Iraqi territory -- one day after Iran's ambassador in Baghdad was summoned to the Foreign Ministry and given an official protest.

Yawer said villagers who fled the shelling are now living in makeshift camps set up by the regional Kurdish government because of damage to their property and livestock.

He added that Iran's latest spate of shelling started on May 2 with gunships and artillery targeting villages east of Suleimaniyah in northeastern Iraqi Kurdistan.

Yawer said no casualties have been reported. He recalled that Iranian and Turkish forces have been intermittently shelling the Kurdish region's borders with the two countries since 2007.

The Iraqi parliament and the Kurdish regional legislature have both condemned Iranian shelling of Iraqi territory.