The border guards were "abducted between 4 am and 5 am in the Lulakdan area of the border by a terrorist group," the official IRNA news agency reported.

Lulakdan is a small village 150 kilometres (about 90 miles) southeast of Zahedan, capital of the southeaster province of Sistan-Baluchistan..

Of the 14, two were members of the elite Revolutionary Guards intelligence unit, and seven were volunteers in the Basij militia involved in "a security operation".

The rest were regular border guards, according to the Young Journalists' Club, a state-owned news website.

The reports did not name a specific group as a suspect in the abduction.

The region has long been a flashpoint, with Baluchi separatists and jihadists based in Pakistan regularly attacking Iranian security posts.