AP: Iranian security personnel crossed into southwest Pakistan on Sunday, shot to death one man and wounded another in an incident that could cause tension between the two countries, a Pakistani border official said.
The Associated Press
By ABDUL SATTAR, Associated Press
QUETTA, Pakistan (AP) — Iranian security personnel crossed into southwest Pakistan on Sunday, shot to death one man and wounded another in an incident that could cause tension between the two countries, a Pakistani border official said.
Iranian forces took the two men, apparently smugglers, from the Mazah Sar area of Baluchistan province back across the border, said Mir Zafar Bangulzai.
Pakistani border officials pursued them into Iran, retrieved the two men and brought them back to Pakistan, said Bangulzai. They also detained three Iranian border security personnel, he said.
The incident occurred in a desolate area where the border is not clearly marked.
The man who was killed, Saeed Rigi, and the one who was wounded, his brother, Islam Rigi, were smugglers, said Bangulzai.
Tensions have flared periodically between Pakistan and Iran over Jundullah, an armed Sunni Muslim opposition group that has been fighting the Shiite Iranian government. Tehran has accused the group of operating along the border area in Baluchistan.
Iran captured the group’s leader, Abdulmalik Rigi, in 2010 on a flight from Dubai to Kyrgyzstan.
Bangulzai said the two men involved in Sunday’s incident were not related to the Jundullah leader or connected to the militant group, but they were from his same tribe.
