The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) says two of its members have died in separate incidents in Iranian Kurdistan amid clashes in the region.
The IRGC, which has been involved in operations against individuals they have deemed "suspicious" and those accused of killing Sajjad Amiri, a Basij paramilitary member, acknowledged the deaths on June 14.
The IRGC's Kermanshah Province branch said Mehdi Shah Maleki died in a "confrontation with a suspicious individual" in the city of Eslamabad-e-Gharb. It did not provide further details on the killing but added that two other IRGC members were also injured by gunfire.
The IRGC claims that the "suspicious individual" was arrested, but Hengaw, a Norway-based group that monitors rights violations in Iran's Kurdish regions, said the IRGC “has not been successful in arresting anyone and has fired indiscriminately at residential homes.”
The Tasnim News Agency, which is affiliated with the IRGC, claimed that the identities of two suspects in Amiri's murder are "known" and that one of them had been convicted of previous crimes and had failed to return to prison after the end of a leave granted for a family visit.
In a separate incident, Hengaw reported that an IRGC member was killed in an armed confrontation between IRGC forces and members of the Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK) on June 13 in the vicinity of the city of Sarvabad.
IRGC ground forces announced the "complete cleansing" on June 14 of the Kowsalan heights in the city of Sarvabad from those whom the IRGC has labeled "counter-revolutionaries."
At the time, the IRGC did not mention any casualties in these confrontations.
Two Kurdish news sites reported that IRGC forces "shelled" the area and that last week, IRGC forces used drones to shell areas around the mountain of Shahu in the cities of Ravansar, Paveh, and Sarvabad in Kermanshah and Kurdistan provinces.
Iran has been roiled in recent months by nationwide protests sparked by the September 2022 death of Mahsa Amini while she was being held in police custody for allegedly wearing a head scarf improperly.
The protests started in Amini’s hometown of Saghez in Iran's Kurdistan region and spread to dozens of cities and towns across Iran.
The wave of protests and the government crackdown that followed have left scores of demonstrators dead and seen thousands detained.