Iran rebels threaten to kill police hostages: TV

DUBAI (Reuters) - A Sunni rebel group holding Iranian policemen hostage said in a video it would kill the men unless authorities freed jailed rebels, Al Arabiya television reported on Thursday.

The video from Jundollah (God's Soldiers) aired by the television showed the hostages, some of them sobbing, flanked by masked gunmen.

The rebels, whom predominantly Shi'ite Iran has linked to al Qaeda, set a deadline of June 27 for Tehran to meet their demands, including the release of arrested comrades, the satellite network said.

Iran said last weekend bandits had kidnapped 16 policemen and taken them to neighboring Pakistan, after attacking a police station in the volatile province of Sistan-Baluchestan, notorious for clashes between security forces and drug smugglers and home to Iran's mostly Sunni Muslim ethnic Baluchis.

In August, Iran blamed the Jundollah group for the kidnappings of 30 people in the province. Those hostages, taken by their captors to Pakistan, were freed by Pakistani forces.

In 2007, Jundollah claimed responsibility for an attack on a bus carrying Iranian Revolutionary Guards that killed 11 people.

Iranian officials have said that the group's leader Abdolmalek Rigi is a leader of al Qaeda's network in Iran.

Iran has often accused Washington and London of trying to destabilize the country by supporting rebels, mainly in sensitive border areas.

Washington accuses Iran of supporting militias in neighboring Iraq that have fought U.S. and U.S.-backed government forces. Tehran denies it.

(Reporting by Firouz Sedarat; Andrew Roche)