Three killed in string of bomb attacks

At least three people were killed yesterday when a series of bomb attacks targeting public buildings rocked Iran's restive southwestern city of Ahvaz, an interior ministry official said.

Interior spokesman Jahanbaksh Khanjani said there were four explosions and that "three or four people" were killed in Ahvaz, the capital of oil-rich Khuzestan Province and an ethnic-Arab majority city close to the border with Iraq.

State media reported three "strong explosions," which came just days before the Islamic republic is due to go to the polls on Friday to elect a new president.

Ahvaz rocked by several days of ethnic unrest in April, although it was not clear if the blasts were related to that violence.

Khanjani at least one of the attacks was a car bomb attack.

Quoted the official news agency IRNA, the interior ministry's security affairs director Amir Hossein Motahar said there were three explosions -- one outside the prefecture, another outside a housing ministry building and another outside the home of the director of state television operations in Ahvaz.