Iran's media was split on Sunday over which candidate to back in next month's presidential election after a key moderate and a powerful government figure entered the fray.

The front pages of the reformist press were plastered with pictures of former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a moderate, while newspapers favoring the incumbent president touted government candidate Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei.

Iranian guards shot dead 10 Afghan migrants illegally trying to cross the border from the western province of Herat, officials in Kabul said Sunday.

Thousands of Afghans cross illegally into Iran every year to seek work as Afghanistan's economy struggles to grow amid an Islamist insurgency that erupted after the 2001 fall of the Taliban.

Israeli Premier Benjamin Netanyahu is "fully determined" to try to halt sales by Russia of advanced missiles to Syria when he visits Moscow for talks with President Vladimir Putin, a minister said Sunday.

A reported Russian plan to sell Damascus S-300 missile batteries "worries us at the highest level and the prime minister is fully determined that this contract should not be fulfilled," Energy and Water Minister Silvan Shalom, a member of the security cabinet, told public radio.

Iran has condemned as a "savage terrorist crime" twin car bomb attacks which killed 43 people and injured dozens in a small Turkish town near the Syrian border, media reported on Sunday.

The state broadcaster's website quoted Deputy Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi as saying that "confronting terrorism is the duty of all countries".

The head of the Mustaqbal bloc MP Fouad Saniora slammed on Sunday Hizbullah chief Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah's speech, saying that it has taken Lebanon on a “new and dangerous” track.

He said in a statement: “Nasrallah has steered Lebanon towards the conflict in the region.”

Iran has given Reuters news agency permission to reopen its Tehran bureau after work there was suspended in March 2012 over one of its video reports, a culture ministry official said on Saturday.

"The court authorized Reuters to open its Tehran bureau," deputy culture minister Mohammad Jafar Mohammadzadeh told the ISNA news agency, without specifying when the decision was made.

The race for Iran's highest elected office was revitalized on Saturday when former president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and top nuclear negotiator Saeed Jalili officially registered for the June 14 election.

Rafsanjani, who was president between 1989 and 1997, registered at the interior ministry in the closing minutes of the five-day registration process for the presidential vote which wrapped up on Saturday.

A strong earthquake of 6.2 magnitude hit southern Iran early on Saturday, the U.S. Geological Survey said, with local media reporting of damaged villages and at least 20 people injured.

The epicenter of the quake was measured at 85 kilometers (52 miles) southeast of the southern town of Minab, located in the Hormuzgan province, at 0208 GMT , the USGS said. It was at a depth of 36.44 km (22.64 miles).

Iran unveiled on Thursday a new drone, dubbed the Epic, capable of carrying out both surveillance and attack missions, the Mehr news agency reported.

Defense Minister General Ahmad Vahidi was quoted as saying the Epic, which can fly at high altitudes, is a "stealth aircraft that cannot be detected by enemies."

Iran on Tuesday warned against any "provocations" in the Gulf as a U.S.-led international naval force began a massive minesweeping exercise.

"Any movement in the region will be fully monitored by our defense forces," foreign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast told reporters when asked about the largest exercise of its kind in the region scheduled to begin next week.