Pak militants staging raids inside Iran: ABC

Washington, Apr 4: The US has been secretly advising and encouraging a Pakistani militant group that has carried out a series of deadly guerrilla raids inside Iran, ABC News reported, citing US and Pakistani intelligence sources.

The raids have resulted in the deaths or capture of Iranian soldiers and officials, ABC reported.

The group, members of the Baluchi tribe, operates from Pakistan's gas-rich province of Baluchistan, just across the border from Iran, the report said.

The only relationship with the group that US intelligence acknowledges is cooperation in tracking al Qaeda figures in that part of Pakistan, ABC reported yesterday.

The group, called Jundullah, has produced videos showing Iranian soldiers and border guards it says it has captured, ABC said.

ABC cited US government sources it did not identify as saying the United States does not provide direct funding for the group but has maintained close ties to its leader, Abd el Malik Regi, since 2005.

A CIA official said the account was not accurate.

Regi claims to have personally executed some of the Iranian captives, the ABC News report said.

''He is essentially commanding a force of several hundred guerrilla fighters that stage attacks across the border into Iran on Iranian military officers, Iranian intelligence officers, kidnapping them, executing them on camera,'' said Alexis Debat, a senior fellow on counterterrorism at the Nixon Center and an ABC News consultant.

''He used to fight with the Taliban. He's part drug smuggler, part Taliban, part Sunni activist,'' Debat told ABC.

The group took credit for an attack in February that killed at least 11 members of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard riding on a bus in the Iranian city of Zehedan, ABC said.

According to the report, Iranian state television last month broadcast what it said were confessions by those responsible for the bus attack.

They reportedly admitted to being members of Jundullah and said they had been trained for the mission at a secret location in Pakistan, ABC said.

ABC cited Pakistani government sources as saying the secret campaign against Iran was on the agenda when Vice President Dick Cheney met with Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf in February.

A spokesman for Cheney's office did not immediately respond to a phone call seeking comment.

Reuters