Commander of the IRGC Ground Force Brigadier General Mohammad Pakpour said Wednesday that the two terrorist groups, affiliated to counter-revolutionaries, were attempting to infiltrate into Iran through the Oshnavieh border area near the border with Iraq, but were identified and tracked by the IRGC intelligence forces.
The IRGC Ground Forces clashed with the terrorists, during which some of the terrorists were killed, Pakpour said, adding that a pursuit operation is underway in order to smash the remnants of the terrorists in the area.
General Pakpour noted that the terrorists had been seeking to carry out sabotage and terrorist attacks inside the country.
The clashes came after the IRGC forces killed five members of the Party for Free Life in Kurdistan (PJAK) terrorist group in another border area northwest of Iran on June 13.
According to the public relations department of the IRGC’s Hamze Sayyid al-Shohada base, members of the terrorist cell were killed in an ambush after extensive intelligence activities in Sardasht region in the northwestern province of West Azarbaijan.
A large amount of weapons, ammunition and documents were also seized from the terrorists after the operation.
The slain terrorists were those behind the assassination last month of two local members of Basij in the border city of Sardasht and another engineer who was engaged in development projects that the IRGC carries out in border areas to tackle economic deprivation, the statement added.
PJAK is an offshoot of the internationally-recognized terrorist group, the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which conducts deadly operations in western Iran, northern Iraq and southern Turkey.
PJAK terrorists are involved in regular armed clashes with Iranian security forces along the country’s western border with Iraq’s semi-autonomous Kurdistan region.
Terrorist attacks are rare in Iran, but al-Qaeda-linked and other groups stage hit-and-run assaults in border areas from time to time.