TEHRAN, Feb 24: Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards said they killed 17 rebels in northwestern Iran on the border with Turkey and quickly accused the United States and its allies of seeking to provoke tensions along the country’s borders.

In a statement, the Guards said 17 “counter-revolutionary mercenaries” were killed, the official Islamic Republic News Agency reported on Saturday. The statement did not name a specific Iranian opposition group or provide more details about the incident, IRNA reported.

But the Kurdish opposition group PEJAK, which stands in Kurdish for the “Party of Free Life of Kurdistan,” has been involved in sporadic armed clashes with Iranian forces in the past two years.

The Guards chief, Gen Yahya Rahim Safavi, said the US, Britain and Israel were seeking to incite tension on Iran’s borders to undermine the government in Tehran, IRNA reported.—AP