"4 Iran police kidnapped by PKK"

Iran says four police seized by PKK-linked group

Monday, August 15, 2005 - �2005 IranMania.com

LONDON, August 15 (IranMania) - Four Iranian policemen have been taken hostage in the northwest of the country near the border with Turkey by a group linked to Turkey's outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), police said on Monday,  AFP said.

"Four members of the police force were taken hostage by the Pejak armed group in Western Azerbaijan province Friday evening," Iran's police chief Brigadier General Esmail Ahmadi-Moqaddam said, according to official news agencies.

He said however that he hoped they would be freed soon, and declined to confirm press reports that one had been killed.

A week ago, the deputy governor of Western Azerbaijan, Abbas Khorshidi, denied reports that forces from Pejak, said to be linked to the PKK, were in the area.

Kurdish areas in western Iran have been the scene of ethnic violence after police in July shot and killed a Kurdish man, said to be wanted on criminal charges the Kurdish stronghold of Mahabad.

So far, eight Iranian soldiers and two people have reported killed in fighting between Iranian border guards and Pejak.

Branded a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union, the PKK has fought Ankara since 1984 and recently stepped up violence in Turkey's mainly Kurdish southeast after calling off a five-year unilateral ceasefire in June last year.

Tehran and Ankara are linked by an accord calling on Iran to fight the PKK and for Turkey to fight the People's Mujahedeen, an armed Iranian opposition group based in Iraq.

We just had a discussion about the backgrounds about the conflicts between PKK and the Iranian forces, and it turned rather ugly. No need to go through this all over again.
Read the news cutting and draw your ownconclusions.