Iran detains Iraqi soldier in border shooting incident

ARBIL, Iraq
Fri May 14, 2010 8:32am EDT
Sun, May 9 2010

ARBIL, Iraq (Reuters) - Iranian troops fired into the air and detained an Iraqi border patrol officer after mistaking Iraqi border guards for Kurdish rebels on a northern stretch of the two countries' border, officials said Friday.

There was no exchange of fire between the two sides in Thursday's incident, contrary to some reports, said Major General Jabbar Yawar, spokesman for Iraq's Kurdish peshmerga security forces.

"The Iranians thought the Iraqi forces belonged to the Kurdish opposition PJAK (the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan)," Yawar said.

"After no more than five minutes of shooting, which was from the Iranian side only, the incident ended when the Iraqi soldiers explained ... that they are Iraqi border guards."

An Iraqi officer was detained when he went over to the Iranian forces to identify himself, said Brigadier General Ahmed Gharib, head of Iraq's border guards in Iraq's northern Kurdish province of Sulaimaniya.

"Detaining the Iraqi officer was not justified. We have made calls through official channels to release him, which was supposed to happen today, but did not," he said.

"The Iraqi forces did not open fire, so there was no reason to detain the officer."

The Iranian authorities were not immediately available for comment.

Iranian security forces often clash with rebels from the PJAK, an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) which took up arms in 1984 for an ethnic homeland in southeast Turkey.

Thursday's incident took place in a border area near the town of Darbandikhan in Sulaimaniya, 260 km (160 miles) northeast of Baghdad.

Iran and Iraq fought a ferocious eight-year war in the 1980s in which a million people died.

But relations have improved enormously since Sunni dictator Saddam Hussein was ousted in the 2003 U.S.-led invasion and Iraq's Shi'ite majority rose to political prominence. Iran is also a predominantly Shi'ite Muslim state.

Still, long-running border disputes have not been fully settled.

In December, a small group of Iranian troops took over an oil well for a few days in a remote region along a disputed part of the border. The well is considered by Iraq as part of its Fakka oilfield and the incident caused oil prices to rise.

Like Iraq, Turkey and Syria, Iran has a large Kurdish minority, mainly living in the Islamic Republic's northwest and west.

Iran designates PJAK, which seeks autonomy for Kurdish areas in Iran and finds shelter in Iraq's northeastern border provinces, as a terrorist group. The United States, Iran's arch foe, in February last year also branded PJAK as a terrorist organization.

(Reporting by Shamal Aqrawi; Writing by Rania El Gamal; Editing by Jon Boyle)