Iran Guards Kill Three Rebels in Kurdish Region

A top commander of Iran's Revolutionary Guards said his forces killed three rebels and arrested three others in a western region that borders Iraqi Kurdistan, media reported on Sunday.

"During clashes that took place Friday in the Baneh region, three members of a terrorist group were killed and two others were arrested," Mehr news agency quoted Brigadier General Mohammad Hassan Rajabi as saying.

Another man was arrested on Sunday morning.

On October 10, rebels killed six members of the elite Revolutionary Guards during clashes in Baneh, a Kurdish populated region in northwestern Iran, media reports said.

In April last year Kurdish rebels killed four Guards members in the region.

Seven months earlier, the Guards declared it had cleared rebels of the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan, or PJAK, from border areas of the region.

Iran on Saturday executed 16 rebels after gunmen killed at least 14 border guards in the mountains of Sistan-Baluchestan, a province in southeastern Iran.

The Iranian provinces of Sistan-Baluchestan and Kurdestan are home large communities of minority Sunni Muslims, unlike the rest of Shiite-dominated Iran.