TEHRAN— Armed bandits martyred four members of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Guards Corps in fighting in a southern province, the official IRNA news agency reported on Saturday.
The report said the clash between IRGC members and the bandits happened on Friday night in the Gounic district of Sistan and Baluchistan province. The site of the fighting is some 1,250 kilometers (775 miles) southeast of the capital Tehran.
Sistan-Baluchistan straddles the border with Pakistan. The province has been the scene of occasional clashes between foreign-backed terrorists and Iranian forces. Security forces have also fought with drug traffickers in the province, which is on a major smuggling route for Afghan opium and heroin.
A terrorist group affiliated with Al-Qaeda and known as Jeish al-Adl, linked to U.S., Saudi and British spy agencies, operates in the area.
Separately, the IRGC’s Hamzeh Seyed al-Shohada Base said it had discovered and seized a load of weapons and ammunition from a counterrevolutionary group in the country’s northwestern province of West Azarbaijan.
The outlaws, it said, sought to use the arms to carry out acts of sabotage and spread insecurity in the country, but failed to implement their vicious plans.
In May, IRGC forces dismantled a hostile counterrevolutionary group in the country’s northwestern province of East Azarbaijan.
The group, dubbed Hoboot Iran (Fall of Iran), had been seeking to bring together various anti-Iran movements against the Islamic establishment since early 2018.
It said the group was masterminded by foreign-based monarchists and funded by certain Western countries and Saudi Arabia.