TEHRAN —
Clashes broke out Sunday between
Iranian border guards and Taliban forces,
officials said, with the Afghan side confirming one of their border officers
was killed and another wounded.
اضافة اعلان
Both sides
accused the other of opening fire first.
“There was a
clash between the border guards of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the
Taliban forces”, Meysam Barazandeh, governor of Iran’s Hirmand county, was quoted as
saying by the Fars news agency.
He added that
“the conflict was brief and has ended.”
Fars reported
that clashes took place on the Iranian side of the border, in the Shaghalak
area of Hirmand country, in the southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchestan.
“A border
violation by the Taliban took place today,” Barazandeh said, adding that “our
forces gave the necessary response”, and that there “were no casualties” on the
Iranian side.
Iran’s Tasnim news
agency said Taliban forces shot at some houses in the town of Dust Mohammad,
which was followed by an exchange of fire “for several minutes.”
A statement
issued by
Afghanistan’s Nimroz provincial information center blamed Iranian
border guards for the incident.
“Iranian border
forces fired at a patrol of our border forces in Kang district of Nimroz
province,” the statement said.
“After that they
(Iranian forces) fired in the area with light and heavy weapons. In this
shooting, one of our border force personnel was martyred and another injured,”
it added.
Last month,
Iran’s foreign ministry reported the death of an Iranian border guard in an
“incident” at a border crossing with Afghanistan, also in Sistan-Baluchestan.
Iran, like many
other nations, has so far not recognized the new government formed by the
Taliban after it took power amid a hasty withdrawal by US-led foreign forces in
August 2021.
While Iran
insists that the Taliban form an inclusive administration, the Islamist
movement has formed an all-male cabinet made up entirely of members of the
group, and almost exclusively of ethnic Pashtuns.
Water rights
issues have also increased tensions between the neighbors.
In January,
demonstrators in
Sistan-Baluchestan rallied at a border crossing for a protest
over water from the Helmand River.
Tehran has hosted
millions of Afghan refugees for decades, but fresh arrivals have entered the
country since the Taliban’s return to power.
Iran has long had
testy relations with the Taliban, who raided Tehran’s consulate in the northern
Afghan city of Mazar-i-Sharif in 1998, killing 10 diplomats and a journalist.
The Taliban said
the raid was carried out by a renegade force acting against orders.
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