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PJAK militants killed along tense border

URMIA, Iran, June 17 (UPI) -- Iranian forces killed four members of a Kurdish militant group near the northern border of Iraq as officials issue brazen warnings to the United States.

Clashes between Iranian military forces and members of the Party for Free Life in Kurdistan, or PJAK, left four militants dead, Turkish daily newspaper Today's Zaman said.

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Three other militants surrendered to Iranian forces, though Rahim Khorshidvand, the acting commander of the Iranian border guards, said operations against PJAK would continue.

The clashes come as Iranian commanders said the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was mobilized to the Iranian border to thwart what they described as a joint U.S.-Israeli plot to destabilize the region.

"The presence of U.S. and Israeli forces along Iranian borders is the reason behind Iran's military movements in the region," Brig. Gen. Mehdi Moini, the commander of forces in Iran's West Azerbaijan province, told the semiofficial Fars News Agency.

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad told his Turkish counterparts last week he was committed to border security.

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