Report: Gunmen kill 3 Iranian guards near Turkish border

TEHRAN, Iran – Unknown gunmen on Friday killed three Iranian border guards near the country’s northwestern border with Turkey, Iran’s state media reported.

The official IRNA news agency said the three were killed in a clash when “terrorists” tried to sneak into Iran’s West Azerbaijan province, located about 650 kilometres (400 miles) northwest of the capital, Tehran.

The report said two other border guard were wounded and that the infiltrators suffered heavy casualties. The province of West Azerbaijan borders both Iraq and Turkey and the report did not say which country the infiltrators had come from.

The area has seen occasional fighting between Iranian forces and Kurdish separatists, as well as militants linked to the extremist Islamic State group. In July, Iran said “terrorists” killed two people and wounded a third person in an attack in Iran’s province of Kurdistan, to the south of West Azerbaijan. In June, Iran attacked bases of Iranian Kurdish rebels in northern Iraq.