Tehran: Gunmen attacked a bus and seized five Iranian soldiers in the country's restive southeast, media reports said on Saturday as Sunni militants claimed responsibility for the raid.
The group ambushed the bus between the towns of Iranshahr and Chabahar in Sistan-Baluchestan province on Thursday, the IRNA news agency reported.
The agency reported Ali Abodllahi, a deputy interior minister, as saying that the gunmen took six passengers hostage, including five soldiers and a bank clerk, before elite Iranian forces freed two of the troops.
"Two soldiers were freed in an operation carried out in the region last night by the Revolutionary Guards," Abodllahi was quoted as saying.
Mehr news agency reported that the raid was claimed by the Sunni militant group Jundallah.
The group also said it carried out the attack in a statement posted on its website junbish.blogspot.com, adding that it killed a "number of security forces" during the assault.
Jundallah, whose longtime leader Abdul Malek Rigi was executed in June, threatened to kill the hostages unless its members currently held by Iranian authorities were released.
Abdollahi, however, rejected Jundallah's claim that it carried out the abduction.
Jundallah says it fights for the interests of the southeastern province's large ethnic Baluch community, who unlike most Shiite Iranians, mainly follow the Sunni branch of Islam.
The Baluch straddle the border with neighbouring Pakistan and Afghanistan and Jundallah militants have taken advantage of the unrest in the region to find safe haven in the border region.
Sistan-Baluchestan is also known for drug trafficking, smuggling and tribal unrest.
