Five Kurdish rebels killed in clashes with Iranian Guards

Five Kurdish rebels were killed by Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards in clashes along its border with the Kurdish region in Iraq, state media reported.

The news was confirmed by an official statement from the Guards which said "five armed rebels linked to counter-revolutionary groups" were killed on Friday night, official news agency IRNA reported late on Saturday.

The statement did not specify which of the several active separatist insurgencies the rebels belonged to though there has been an increase in clashes in the northwest despite a period of relative calm in the past year.

Similar clashes on June 16 led to the death of 12 "terrorists" and three Iranian soldiers in the city of Oshnavieh, the Revolutionary Guards said earlier this month.  

Five other Kurdish rebels were killed just a few days earlier by Iranian forces who are currently heavily involved in battles against the Islamic State in Syria and Iraq.

In May, reports emerged confirmed dozens of troops from the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps arrived in the southern outskirts of the western city of Fallujah to take part in an Iraqi government operation that recaptured the city from Islamic State militants on June 26.