(Bloomberg) -- Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps killed four suspected militants and arrested eight others in an ongoing operation that targeted a so-called terror group in the country’s restive southeast.
IRGC’s ground forces were deployed in Iran’s Sistan-Baluchistan province for a real-life military exercise involving “combat drones and new tactics” the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency reported on Friday, citing IRGC Spokesman General Ahmad Shafaei.
The IRGC and Iran’s regular army routinely carry out military drills but this one came at a time of high tension in the region, as Tehran weighs how to respond to Israel’s airstrikes against military targets across Iran last weekend.
Concerns over a potential reprisal led oil markets to retrace most of the losses at the start of the week, following Israel’s limited strike on Iran.
The two countries traded direct attacks in April and again last month, raising international concerns about a potential all-out war. Israel has been engaged in conflicts with Iran-backed militant groups in Gaza and Lebanon for more than a year, after the attack by Hamas on Israel in October last year pushed a long-standing shadow conflict into the open.
Sistan-Baluchistan, which borders Pakistan and Afghanistan and is also on the Persian Gulf, is Iran’s poorest province and home to the country’s Sunni Baluch population. Skirmishes between Iranian security forces, armed separatists and drug and fuel traffickers in the area are not unusual.
Shafaei said the drills, which are ongoing and don’t have a set end date, were designed to target an armed group that’s accused of killing IRGC border guards, IRNA reported.
Shafaei said the individuals were killed on Thursday night and a large quantity of weapons and ammunition were also seized by the IRGC during the operation.
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