Iranian security officials defused a handmade bomb on board a domestic flight, officials said yesterday, the latest violence the run-up to Iran’s presidential election less than two weeks away.
The incident occurred on a Kish Air flight headed to Tehran from Ahvaz in the west of the country near the border with Iraq, the Fars news agency reported.
“Last night, 15 minutes after the plane with 131 passengers took off, flight security guards found a handmade bomb placed in the lavatory,” Fars said. “The plane landed immediately at Ahvaz airport and the bomb was defused.”
“Security officials of the Islamic Republic Revolutionary Guards acted well and the incident caused no casualties,” Reza Jafarzadeh, spokesman for Iran’s Civil Aviation Organization, told the state broadcaster.
The passengers were calmed and the plane continued the flight to Tehran, Kish Air manager Reza Nakhjavani told the ILNA news agency.
It was the latest unrest to shake Iran in the run-up to the country’s presidential election on June 12, while Ahvaz itself has witnessed several deadly incidents in recent years.
On Thursday, a suicide bomber killed 25 worshippers and wounded 125 in a Shiite mosque in Zahedan in the southeastern Sistan-Baluchestan province bordering Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The province, which is home to Iran’s Baluch minority who adhere to Sunni Islam, has been the scene of a deadly insurgency by a Sunni rebel group which is strongly opposed to the government of predominantly Shiite Iran.
Iran on Saturday hanged three men in public accused of involvement in the mosque bombing, just 48 hours after the incident.
The mosque attack was reminiscent of a similar outbreak of violence just days before Iran’s last presidential election in 2005 which brought Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to power.
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