Iran official says Kurdish guerrillas claim killing

TEHRAN (Reuters) - An Iranian official said on Tuesday that Kurdish guerrillas had claimed responsibility for the killing of a prosecutor in a northwestern city, the ISNA news agency reported.

Vali Haji Gholizadeh, prosecutor in the city of Khoy in West Azerbaijan province bordering Turkey, was shot dead in front of his home on Monday night.

Mohammad Ali Mousavi, head of the provincial prosecutor's office, said three people had been arrested so far in connection with the shooting and that investigations were still under way.

"Based on the obtained information, the PJAK group has claimed responsibility for the assassination of Khoy's prosecutor," ISNA quoted him as saying, without giving details.

Another official earlier said four suspects were arrested.

Iranian security forces often clash with guerrillas from the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK), an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) which took up arms in 1984 for an ethnic homeland in southeast Turkey.

Like Iraq and Turkey, Iran has a large Kurdish minority, mainly living in the Islamic Republic's northwest and west.

Iran sees PJAK, which seeks autonomy for Kurdish areas in Iran and shelters in Iraq's northeastern border provinces, as a terrorist group. The United States, Iran's arch foe, in February last year also branded PJAK as a terrorist organization.

Iran's judiciary condemned the attack and suggested Western involvement. "In an organized plot another hardworking judge ... was martyred by elements of the global arrogance," it said in a statement, ISNA reported. With "global arrogance", Iran usually refers to the United States and its Western allies.

Iran often accuses the West of seeking to destabilize sensitive border areas by backing armed rebels.

The assassination took place six days after a remote-controlled bomb killed a university scientist in Tehran. Such incidents are relatively rare in Iran, which borders volatile Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iraq.

Iranian officials have blamed the United States and Israel for the bombing attack that killed the Tehran University professor, Massoud Ali-Mohammadi. The United States dismissed the allegation of U.S. involvement as absurd.

An Iranian opposition website said he was a supporter of opposition leaser Mirhossein Mousavi.

(Reporting by Hossein Jaseb and Ramin Mostafavi; Writing by Fredrik Dahl; Editing by Peter Millership)