Iran MP wounded, driver killed in shooting

Attack blamed on Kurdish rebels in Kermanshah province, near Iraq, who have been battling Iranian forces

By AFP 10 July 2016, 7:48 pm

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An Iranian lawmaker and a local official have been wounded and their driver killed in an assassination attempt in a Kurdish-speaking province in the west of the country, media said Sunday.

Heshmatollah Falahat-Pisheh — who represents the town of Eslamabad-e-Gharb in Kermanshah province — was visiting the area with an unidentified local official when four gunmen in a vehicle opened fire on their car, the ISNA news agency of Iran reported.

After the attack, the assailants set fire to their own car and fled the scene on foot, ISNA said, quoting Farhad Tajari, a parliamentarian from the town of Qasr-e Shirin on the border with Iraqi Kurdistan.

Ahmad Safari, a lawmaker from Kermanshah city, told another Iranian news agency, Mizan Online, that the attackers belonged to the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK), an Iranian Kurdish group with close links to Turkey’s outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

Since mid-June, Iranian forces have frequently clashed with militants on the country’s predominantly Kurdish western borders, leaving 33 rebels and six soldiers dead.