TEHRAN — Iran hanged 16 prisoners Saturday in apparent retaliation for the killing a day earlier of 14 border guards in an ambush along the nation’s rugged southeast frontier with Pakistan, Iranian news agencies reported.
The condemned prisoners were linked to groups “hostile to the system,” said the semiofficial Fars News Agency.
The executions were “in response” to the killing Friday of the guards during a cross-border ambush in Saravan township in the southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchistan, Fars reported.
It was unclear whether the hanged prisoners were directly connected to any group involved in the fatal attack on the border guards. The 16 were reportedly executed in a prison in Zahedan, north of Saravan.
Iranian officials did not confirm reports that a group called Jaish ul-Adl, or Army of Justice, had claimed responsibility for the killing of the 14 border guards.
Iran’s deputy interior minister, Ali Abdollahi, was quoted in news reports calling the attack a “terrorist operation” organized outside Iran. The attackers reportedly entered from Pakistan and fled back there after the ambush. There was no official word on casualties among the assailants.
Various Iranian officials called on Pakistan to tighten control of its frontier areas after the attack. President Hassan Rouhani and other top authorities vowed to investigate.
The border officers were killed along a largely lawless and often violent stretch of frontier that is traversed by rebels and smugglers, including drug traffickers.
It was not clear what prompted the attack on the border guards.
