 A group of Iranian soldiers kidnapped near the border with Pakistan nearly two months ago was freed on Sunday, an interior ministry official told AFP. The source, who asked not to be named, gave no further details on the end to the abductions — which Iranian officials had blamed on a hardline Sunni Muslim group operating in the unruly border area in Iran's southeast.. Interior Minister Mostafa Pour-Mohammadi said on January 7 that the kidnappers belonged "to groups influenced by the ideology of the Taliban", the hardline Sunni militia which ruled Afghanistan before the US-led invasion of 2001. |