TEHRAN (Agencies)
Iran arrested three Americans who "infiltrated" through the border with Iraq after they went missing in the area, state-owned al-Alam television said on Saturday, in the Islamic republic's first confirmation of the incident.
"An informed Iranian source confirmed the arrest of three Americans after they infiltrated through the Iraqi border," the Arabic-language television station reported.
A senior Kurdish security official said on Saturday that three tourists, believed to be American, who disappeared close to northern Iraq's border with Iran, had entered Iranian territory and been arrested.
In northern Iraq, a Kurdish official said earlier that three U.S. backpackers were arrested after having been warned on the Iraqi side not to hike in the mountains because of the proximity of the border with Iran.
The tourists had arrived in the Kurdish city of Sulaimaniya, 260 kilometers (160 miles) northeast of Baghdad, from Arbil, the capital of Iraq's largely autonomous Kurdish region, on Wednesday.
Beshro Ahmed, media adviser for general security in Iraq's autonomous Kurdish region, said the two men and a woman had entered from Turkey earlier along with a fourth American who did not join the trek because he was ill.
Ahmed named the three as Shane Bower, Sara Short and Joshua Steel, while Shaun Gabriel Maxwell stayed behind in their hotel in the Kurdish region's second largest city of Sulaimaniyah.
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