Denials come after news website reported 7 US soldiers were seized in Iran's Kuhak area
Pentagon press secretary also denies reports, says all soldiers are accounted for
TEHRAN: All officials in Iran, the US and Islamabad on Sunday denied reports that Iranian security forces had seized seven US troops near the Islamic republic's border with Pakistan.
The denials came after a news website Javanonline.ir, which is close to the Revolutionary Guards, reported that seven US soldiers had been seized in Iran's Kuhak area near the border with Pakistan.
"No American troops have been arrested. We deny it," the governor general of Iran's Sistan-Baluchestan province, told the Arabic language Tehran-based Al-Alam network.
The channel said a source with the provincial border patrol services had also denied the arrests.
The US also rejected the Javanonline report as ‘false’.
"We have no missing soldiers. All are accounted for," Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell said in an email to AFP.
In Islamabad, Pakistan's Foreign Ministry spokesman Abdul Basit told AFP that, "There are no US soldiers there, so the question of arrest does not arise."
Iran's English-language Press TV said the guards themselves rejected the reports that US troops had been arrested as "unfounded", and Javanonline later said its report had been "incorrect" and "apologised" to its readers.
The town of Saravan is near the border with Pakistan in Iran's southeastern Sistan-Baluchestan province.
The province, which also lies on a major narcotics route from Afghanistan and Pakistan, had been the scene of a deadly insurgency by the terrorist group Jundallah, whose leader was executed in Iran this year. AFP
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