Iran Guards say kill three militants near Iraq border

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said they had killed three militants in a security operation conducted on Saturday in the west of the country near the border with Iraq, state media reported.

The “anti-revolutionary terrorists” had planned sabotage attacks after crossing the border into Iran in the Kermanshah area, the Guards said in a statement carried by the official Iranian news agency IRNA.

The statement did not elaborate on the identity of the militants. Armed opposition Kurdish groups based in northern Iraq are active in the border areas.

A local volunteer fighting alongside the Guards was also killed and a fourth militant was injured, the statement said, adding that weapons, ammunition and equipment had been seized.

Iran’s border with Iraq is porous and there is little coordination between the security forces of the two countries.

Last month, the Guards said they had killed nine militants during a security operation in a border area more than 300 km (190 miles) to the north.

In 2017, Islamic State militants carried out coordinated attacks at the parliament building in Tehran and the mausoleum of Iranian revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini south of the capital, killing 18 people.