Iranian police say security forces killed 4 Sunni militants

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Iranian security forces killed four Sunni militants and detained six others in two separate firefights in the country’s west over the past 24 hours, local media and police reported on Tuesday.

According to the official police website, the firefight took place in a neighborhood in the city of Kermanshah, about 500 kilometers (310 miles) southwest of the capital, Tehran.

The police confiscated a Kalashnikov assault rifle and a suicide vest at the site of the clash, the report said. It did not identify the militants, though it called them “takfiris,” a derogatory term in both Arabic and Farsi referring to extremist Sunni Muslims — such as members of the Islamic State group — who accuse other Muslims of being infidels.

Later in the day, Kermanshah Gov. Asadollah Razani told the official IRNA news agency that security forces in another town of the province on Monday night killed another member of militants he described as “takfiri Daesh.” Daesh is an Arabic language acronym for the Islamic State group.

Several members of the group were also arrested, Razani said, adding that grenades, pistols and automatic weapons were confiscated from them. IRNA said the group was planning to “kill and massacre innocent people.”

Deputy interior minister in charge of security affairs, Hossein Zolfaghari, later told the semi-official Fars news agency that the total number of those detained was six. He said one of the four killed was a member of a militant group in neighboring Iraq. He did not elaborate.

Earlier this month, Iran executed 20 convicted members of Sunni militant groups. And in June, Tehran announced it had broken up one of the “biggest terrorist plots” ever on its soil by Sunni extremists.