Iran reopened the crossing points on borders with northern Iraq on Monday after two weeks of closure in protest for US detention of an Iranian official, a local official said.

 

"This morning the Iranian side reopened the Bashmakh crossing point in Panjwin area in Sulaimaniyah province," Atta Ahmed Kurda, head of the provincial police customs told reporters.

 

Kurda confirmed that people and queues of trucks started to cross the border from both sides of the Bashmakh crossing point, some 130 km northeast of Kurdish city of Sulaimaniyah.

 

He said that the Bashmakh crossing point is the second to be reopened in the day out of five crossing points between Iran and the Kurdish region.

 

On September 24, Iran closed its border crossing points with the Kurdish northern Iraq region, protesting the detention of an Iranian official at a hotel in Sulaimaniyah City on alleged charges of being a member of the al-Quds Force, an elite unit of Iran's Revolutionary Guards.

 

The US military said that the Iranian suspect, Mahmoud Farhadi, was an arms smuggler "involved in transporting improvised explosive devices and explosively formed penetrators into Iraq."

 

Iran and Kurdish regional authorities insisted that Farhadi is a businessman and part of a commercial delegation invited to visit Sulaimaniyah.

 

(Xinhua News Agency October 9, 2007)