14 Iran troops seized on Pak border

tehran — Fourteen Iranian security personnel, including Revolutionary Guards intelligence officers, were abducted on the volatile southeastern border with Pakistan on Tuesday, state media reported.

The Guards blamed “terrorist groups that are guided and supported by foreign forces” for the abductions and demanded action by the Pakistani authorities to help locate the captive troops.

The force was “abducted between 4am and 5am in the Lulakdan area of the border by a terrorist group,” the official IRNA news agency said. Lulakdan is a small village 150km from Zahedan, capital of the southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchestan.

The abduction was carried out by “infiltrators linked to anti-revolutionary groups,” the Guards said in a statement on their website.

“Members of terrorist groups that are guided and supported by foreign forces carried this out through deceiving and bribing infiltrators,” they added. They said operations were underway to find those responsible and called on Pakistan “to stamp out terrorists that are stationed near the border” and help recover the captive Iranians. The 14 were involved in “a security operation” and included two members of the elite Revolutionary Guards intelligence unit, seven Basij militiamen and five regular border guards, the Young Journalists’ Club (YJC), a state-owned news website, said. —