Pakistan says 'active' efforts underway to recover Iran troops

Pakistan on Wednesday informed Iran that it had launched "active" efforts to locate 11 Iranian security personnel, including Revolutionary Guards intelligence officers, who were abducted near the countries' shared border.

The Guards blamed "terrorist groups that are guided and supported by foreign forces" for the abductions on Tuesday on the southeastern border with Pakistan.

Pakistan's foreign ministry said Foreign Minister Shah Mahmood Qureshi met his Iranian counterpart Javad Zarif in Islamabad and briefed him "about the active efforts launched by the Pakistan law enforcement agencies to ascertain the whereabouts of the missing Iranian guards, in coordination with the Iranian military and intelligence counterparts".

Qureshi blamed the kidnapping on "our common enemies unhappy with the existing close, friendly relations between Pakistan and Iran", the foreign ministry said in a statement.

The group kidnapped was involved in "a security operation" and included two members of the elite Revolutionary Guards intelligence unit and seven Basij militiamen as well as regular border guards, said the Young Journalists' Club (YJC), an Iranian state-owned news website, in an article that was later deleted.

The abduction took place around the Sistan-Baluchistan province, which has long been a flashpoint, with Pakistan-based Baluchi separatists and jihadists carrying out regular cross-border raids against Iranian security posts.

The province has a large, mainly Sunni Muslim ethnic Baluchi community which straddles the border.