Two Iranian border guards and one Taliban fighter were killed after a shooting broke out near a border post between Iran and Afghanistan, a Taliban spokesman and Iran’s state media said on Saturday. Clashes broke out at the border between the two countries as tensions rise over water rights between the two nations, Iranian police said without reporting casualties.
“Around 10am today, Taliban forces started shooting with all kinds of weapons at an Iranian police station from the Afghanistan side,” state news agency IRNA quoted the deputy head of the police force, Qassem Rezaee, as saying.
The official Tasnim news agency reported that “light and semi-light weapons and artillery were used in the clashes”. Rezaee added that the Iranian forces responded “decisively” to the shooting which happened in Sistan-Baluchistan province.
Earlier on Saturday, the Taliban’s Acting Foreign Minister Amir Khan Muttaqi met with an Iranian envoy to Afghanistan to discuss the Helmand River water rights, according to tweets from Afghan Foreign Ministry official Zia Ahmad. Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency acknowledged the meeting, saying “that issues between the two countries will be better resolved through dialogue.”–AP
