Rebels reported to kill two Iran Revolutionary Guards

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Two Iranian Revolutionary Guards were killed in fighting with rebels in a northwestern region, official media said on Sunday, a part of Iran where security forces and Kurdish guerrillas have often clashed in the past.

IRNA said one of those killed in Saturday's incident was a colonel of the Revolutionary Guards, an elite force that is separate from Iran's regular armed forces.

The Guards had inflicted "heavy blows" on rebels in recent days and killed several of them, it said.

Earlier this month, Iranian media said Iranian forces had killed a suspected member of a Kurdish group operating in border areas near Iraq and Turkey and captured another.

Iranian forces often clash with guerrillas from the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK), an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) which took up arms in 1984 to fight for a Kurdish homeland in southeast Turkey.

Like neighbouring Iraq and Turkey, Iran has a large Kurdish minority, mainly living in the country's northwest.

Iran sees PJAK, which seeks autonomy for Kurdish areas in Iran and shelters in Iraq's northeastern border provinces, as a "terrorist" group.

(Reporting Hashem Kalantari, Writing by Fredrik Dahl)