Iran Says Its Troops, Kurds Killed 1,500 Iraqis in Hit-and-Run Raids

Iran claimed Saturday that its troops and allied Kurdish irregulars have killed 1,500 Iraqis in hit-and-run attacks in the Kurdistan mountains, where a smoldering guerrilla war is heating up.

The Iranians and their allies of the Kurdish Peshmerga--”those who face death”--also shot down two Iraqi military helicopters and destroyed five Soviet-made tanks in the clashes in northeast Iraq over the last few days, said Tehran’s official Islamic Republic News Agency, monitored in Nicosia.

An Iranian communique said the Iranian-Kurdish force overran 20 Iraqi-held villages and 10 key ridges in Sulaymaniyah province, which lies close to strategic regions through which the Iraqis pump oil to Turkey.

There was no way to independently verify the Iranian claim, and the Iraqis made no mention of it in their communiques.

Kurdistan Heating Up

But the Kurdistan region is becoming an increasingly important theater in the 6 1/2-year-old Persian Gulf War, with both sides intensifying operations. Iran and Iraq have forged alliances with rival Kurdish factions, promising them some form of eventual autonomy.

Iraqi-based Iranian dissidents of the Moujahedeen Khalq, or People’s Warriors, claimed to have killed or wounded scores of Iranians on Thursday in an ambush in Baneh, across the border inside Iran. The Moujahedeen work closely with Kurdish rebels in the region.

In recent months, Iranian commandos and their tough mountain warrior allies, who dress in turbans and baggy pants, have attacked the oil field, power station and radar facility in the northern Iraq town of Kirkuk. They have also cut the main highway linking Baghdad with Turkey.