Iran says three militants killed in southeast

Iranian security forces yesterday killed at least three people during clashes with jihadists in the country's restive southeast, state media reported, following a deadly attack on police last month.

"Three terrorists of the enemy were killed and nine others were arrested" during operations in Sistan-Baluchistan province, the official IRNA news agency said.

Some 15 militants have been reported killed since an October 26 attack claimed by the Pakistan-based Sunni jihadist group Jaish al-Adl (Arabic for Army of Justice). That attack left 10 police officers dead in the province.

Sistan-Baluchistan, which borders both Afghanistan and Pakistan, is one of Iran's most impoverished provinces and one of the few mainly Sunni provinces in Shiite-dominated Iran.

It has for years faced unrest involving drug-smuggling gangs, rebels from the Baluchi minority and Sunni Muslim extremists.