Iranian border officials are investigating a television report that several of its soldiers have been kidnapped by a group in the south-east of the country, the foreign ministry said Sunday.
"Border guards are looking into this matter and after obtaining results will announce them through the official channels," a foreign ministry source told the official IRNA news agency.
"We are looking at the entire matter," an interior ministry source told AFP, without confirming if the abduction had actually taken place.
Al-Arabiya television on Saturday broadcast a message from a spokesman of the Sunni group Jundallah (soldiers of Allah), which claimed the movement had kidnapped nine Iranian soldiers in the Saravan region, close to the border with Pakistan.
The group is demanding the release of 16 of its members held by the Iranian authorities, according to the spokesman.
The channel said that Jundallah announced in July it had killed an Iranian security officer after the expiry of a three-week ultimatum for Tehran to release its supporters detained in the country.
The Iranian press on Sunday also reported an attack on a police post in the Saravan region, without mentioning the date.
Kayhan said "bandits" had taken 10 policemen prisoner while Jomhouri Eslami reported the attackers belonged to the Aksani tribe who the paper said stand accused of an attack on presidential security forces on December 15.