DUBAI: Three members of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), sent to reinforce border police, were killed in an attack in the southeast of Iran near Pakistan, according to Iranian media reports on Monday.
Armed “bandits” killed the IRGC members late on Sunday near the city Saravan in the Sistan-Baluchistan region, according to a Revolutionary Guards statement carried by Fars news agency.
“Terrorists carried out an ambush against a military patrol and, after killing three Revolutionary Guards, fled into nearby Pakistan,” the province’s deputy governor Ali Asghar Mirshekari told the official IRNA news agency.
Similar attacks, usually against police officers and border guards, happen in the border region several times a year.
The area is also rife with drug and arms traffickers. The report did not give the identity of the armed group.
In February, Jaish Al-Adl (Army of Justice), a militant group, claimed responsibility for kidnapping five Iranian border guards and taking them to Pakistan. One was killed and the others were freed in April.
The ambush took place in the restive southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchestan, where militants have carried out repeated attacks against the security forces of mainly Iran.
A military official cited by the Fars news agency said that the rebel attack took place in the Saravan region on Sunday afternoon and that the dead included a colonel he identified as Akbar Abdollahnejad.
Iranian troops killed near Pak border
