DUBAI (Reuters) - Militants killed 10 Iranian Revolutionary Guards in an attack on a post on the Iraqi border on Saturday, Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency reported, the latest deadly clash in an area where armed opposition Kurdish groups are active. "The attack by the evil rebels and terrorists against a revolutionary border post and the explosion of a munitions depot caused the martyrdom of 10 fighters," a statement by the Revolutionary Guards, as quoted by the semi-official Tasnim news agency, said on Saturday. Hosein Khosheqbal, a provincial security official, told state television that 11 members of the Guard's voluntary Basij forces were killed during the fighting , which occurred in the Marivan area, about 600 kilometers (375 miles) west of the capital, Tehran, and just 20 kilometers from the Iraqi border

"The latest news is that the Basij and Guards forces are in hot pursuit of the attackers," Khosheqbal said. The Party of Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK) — an outlawed group that seeks self-governance for Iran’s Kurds and has links to Turkey’s militant Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK) — operates in the border area, along with other armed Kurdish groups based in northern Iraq. Earlier this month, the Revolutionary Guards said they had killed three militants in a security operation near the border with Iraq, and nine militants were reported killed by the Guards last month further north on the border. It was the largest number of Iranian troops killed in a single attack on the Iraqi border in recent years, though the area has seen occasional fighting between Iranian forces and Kurdish separatists as well as fighters linked to Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL, also known as ISIS).
PJAK militants blow up an ammunition dump and kill eleven Iranian border guards stationed at an Iran–Iraq border post in Marivan County. Several militants are killed in return.