'Five rebels, two guards' killed in Iran clashes

BAGHDAD — A suicide bomber driving a vehicle packed with explosives blew himself up outside the offices of a major Kurdish party in northern Iraq early Wednesday, the deadliest in a wave of morning attacks that killed at least 31 people across the country.

Twelve Kurdish rebels and five members of the Turkish security forces were killed in violent clashes in the southeast of the country following two separate Kurdish attacks, the army said Thursday.Fighting erupted overnight Thursday after rebels from the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), armed with rockets and assault rifles, attacked a military unit in a rural area near Dogan village in Siirt province.Four soldiers were wounded in the initial fire and two later died in hospital, the general staff said in a statement on its website.

PARIS — Three Kurdish women, including one of the founders of a militant group battling Turkish troops since 1984, were “executed” at a Kurdish centre in Paris, the interior minister said Thursday. The news prompted angry crowds of Kurds to flood into the area. Turkey’s Anadolu news agency identified one of the victims as Sakine Cansiz, a founding member of the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK. Turkey and its Western allies, including the United States and the European Union, consider the group a terrorist organization.

Iranian troops have crossed into Iraq twice in three days amid clashes with Kurdish rebels in the Qandil mountains near the border, a security spokesman said Saturday.The incursions, which both occurred after Iran's ambassador to Baghdad was summoned to the foreign ministry over the issue, came during a series of clashes in recent days with the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK).

Iraqi border guards exchanged fire with Iranian troops on the border with Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region on Thursday, the head of Iraq's border forces in Sulaimaniyah province said."Iranian forces thought that the border guards belonged to PJAK (the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan -- an Iranian Kurdish rebel group) and started to open fire," Brigadier General Ahmed Gharib Diskara told reporters."The border guards shot back and one officer of the Iraqi army has been captured. Negotiations are ongoing to free him."

KABUL, Afghanistan — Taliban militants attacked an army outpost near the eastern border with Pakistan on Friday, killing 13 soldiers, the Defence Ministry said. The attack occurred in a volatile province that serves as a major gateway for insurgents coming from Pakistan. Hostilities have surged as weather improves, allowing easier passage through the mountainous area.

OTTAWA — Canada is contributing one of its large C-17 military cargo planes to deliver supplies to the capital of Mali after a request from France. But Prime Minister Stephen Harper insists no Canadian Forces personnel will be involved in any combat action in the landlocked West African country.

Three soliders from Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard Corps were killed in clashes with rebels in the country's northwest, Mehr news agency reported on Wednesday.The rebels were only described as being "counter-revolutionaries" in the report, which said the violence happened on Tuesday near the town of Khoy where security forces have been battling Kurdish separatists for years.The latest unrest came after Iranian armed forces arrested the alleged assassin of Khoy's prosecutor, Vali Haji-Gholizadeh, in January after clashes with Kurdish rebels.