Friday, July 16, 2010

At least 21 people, including members of the elite Revolutionary Guards, were killed and 100 wounded in suicide attack at a Shiite mosque in the southeast Iranian city of Zahedan on Thursday

A late night broadcast by Al Arabiya television said the Sunni Muslim rebel group Jundollah claimed responsibility for the attack on the Zahedan's Grand Mosque.

The group said the attacks were in response to the execution by Iran of the group's leader Abdolmalek Rigi in June, the Dubai-based channel said.

In an e-mail to the station, the group said the bombings targeted a gathering of the Revolutionary Guards in the southeastern city of Zahedan, Arabiya said.

"In the two explosions in Zahedan more than 20 people were killed and over 100 were injured," Fariborz Rashedi, head of the emergency unit at Sistan-Baluchestan province told IRNA.

It later quoted Zahedan prosecutor Mohammad Marzieh as saying that 21 people had died.

Iran's deputy Interior Minister said "a number of Iran's Revolutionary Guards were killed and injured," the semi-official Fars news agency reported.

Zahedan's MP Hoseinali Shahriari told Fars that he believed Sunni rebel group Jundollah was behind the explosions.

Iran hanged Jundollah's leader, Abdolmalek Rigi, last month for his involvement in earlier deadly attacks in Iran.

Predominantly Shiite Muslim Iran arrested Rigi in February, four months after his Jundollah group claimed a bombing which killed dozens of people, including 15 members of the Guards. It was the deadliest attack in Iran since the 1980s.

Zahedan is the capital of Sistan-Baluchestan province which shares a border with Pakistan. The province faces serious security problems and there are frequent clashes between police and drug dealers and bandits.

In 2009, the group detonated a bomb in a Shiite mosque in Zahedan, killing 30 people and wounding more than 120.

Jundallah says it is fighting for the rights of the Sunni Baluch minority, and accuses Iran's Shiite-dominated government of persecution. Tehran claims Jundallah is behind an insurgency in its southeast that has destabilized the border region with Pakistan.

In June, Iran hanged the group's leader, Abdulhamid Rigi, in Zahedan after he was found guilty of carrying out attacks against civilians, armed robbery, and engaging in a disinformation campaign against Iran.

His younger brother, Abdulhamid, was executed in May in Iran after being captured in Pakistan in 2008 and extradited to Iran.

The group gained attention six years ago after it launched a campaign of sporadic kidnappings and bombings that killed dozens. The group claims minority Sunni tribes in southeastern Iran suffer discrimination at the hands of Iran's Shiite leadership.

Iran has accused the US and Britain of supporting Jundallah in an effort to weaken the Iranian government, a charge they deny. Iran also claims the group is linked to Al-Qaeda, but experts say no evidence of such a link has been found.

Source

No comments:

Post a Comment

Being Civil and Humble is the only way to communicate.