DUBAI (Reuters) - Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Saturday they had killed ten militants overnight in a security operation conducted in the northwest of the country near the border with Iraq, the official news agency IRNA reported.

“A well-equipped terrorist group ... intending to infiltrate the country from the border area of Oshnavieh to foment insecurity and carry out acts of sabotage was ambushed and at least 10 terrorists were killed in a heavy clash,” the Revolutionary Guards said in a statement carried by IRNA.

There has been sporadic fighting with Iranian Kurdish militant groups based in Iraq as well as Islamic State fighters near Iran’s porous border with Iraq.

In July, there were at least two clashes in the mountainous border area, in which at least 10 Guards and three militants were killed.

In 2017, Islamic State militants carried out coordinated attacks at the parliament building in Tehran and the mausoleum of Iranian revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini south of the capital, killing 18 people.