Iran security personnel kidnapped in Pakistan border region

Fourteen Iranian security personnel, including Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps intelligence officers, were abducted on the volatile southeastern border with Pakistan on Tuesday, state media reported.

The border guards were “abducted between 4 a.m. and 5 a.m. in the Lulakdan area of the border by a terrorist group,” the official IRNA news agency reported on Tuesday, October 16.

Lulakdan is a small village 150km (about 90 miles) southeast of Zahedan, capital of the southeastern Iranian province of Sistan and Balochistan.

Of the 14, two were members of the elite Revolutionary Guards intelligence unit, and seven were volunteers in the Basij militia involved in “a security operation.”

The rest were regular border guards, according to a story in the Young Journalists’ Club, a state-owned news website.

The reports did not name a specific group as a suspect in the abduction.

Pakistani security officials told AFP they had been informed of the abduction by Iran.

“We are in contact with local tribal people and are looking into it so that we can take timely action for their recovery,” said a senior security official based in Quetta.

The region has long been a flashpoint, with Baluchi separatists and jihadists based in Pakistan regularly attacking Iranian security posts.

With reporting from AFP