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Seven hurt as two bombs explode in Iranian city

Posted on: Monday, 8 May 2006, 13:53 CDT

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Two small bombs exploded in the northwestern Iranian city of Kermanshah on Monday, wounding at least seven people, an official was quoted as saying.

Kermanshah lies in Iran's western borderlands which have simmered with unrest among the Kurdish minority for almost 12 months. Several members of Iran's security forces and Kurds have died in street protests and gun-battles.

"The two blasts injured seven people at the governor's office and the trade organization's building on Monday," the official IRNA news agency quoted Babek Izadi, head of Kermanshah's medical faculty, as saying.

Kermanshah's governor Hossein Khosheghbal told state television the blasts caused minor damage to government buildings and smashed some windows.

"Police and security forces are investigating the bombings," Khosheghbal said.

Iranian Kurdish rebels claimed responsibility for the blasts.

The Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK), a branch of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), a Turkish Kurd guerrilla group, said the two bombings were in response to Iranian shelling of villages and rebel camps in northern Iraq.

"We stated previously that the attacks on our camps would not go unanswered," said a PJAK spokesman by telephone.

"We carried out these actions firstly due to Iran's attacks on our camps in Iraq and secondly due to the pressure on the Kurdish people in Iran," he said.

Government leaders in Iraq's Kurdistan say Iran has attacked PKK guerrillas in Iraq three times in late April and early May.

The PKK, which has been fighting for a Kurdish homeland in Turkey since 1984, accuses Ankara and Tehran of mounting coordinated attacks against it and PJAK.

More than 30,000 people, most of them Kurds, have been killed in the conflict since 1984.

(Additional reporting by Jon Hemming in London)

Source: REUTERS

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