A suicide bomber blew himself up at a meeting of the elite Revolutionary Guards in southeastern Iran yesterday, killing about 20 people including at least seven senior commanders, news agencies said.
The attack took place in the city of Pisheen near the border with Pakistan in restive Sistan-Baluchestan Province, which hosts a substantial Sunni population, news agencies said.
The Guards accused Western powers of being behind the attack, the deadliest against them since a bombing in February 2007 in the Sistan-Baluchestan provincial capital Zahedan killed 13 people.
Iran’s state broadcaster said yesterday’s blast occurred at around 8am in front of a local gymnasium in Pisheen. Fars news agency said the bomber struck when Guard officers were preparing for a meeting with local leaders of Shiite and Sunni communities. Some local tribal heads were among the dead, media reports said.
The official IRNA news agency said the suicide bomber “wearing an explosives vest blew himself up inside the meeting.”
Fars said: “In this terrorist act, General Nur-Ali Shushtari, deputy commander of the Revolutionary Guards ground forces, General Mohammad-Zadeh, commander of the Revolutionary Guards in Sistan-Baluchestan Province, the Guards’ commander for the town of Iranshahr and the commander of the Amir al-Momenin unit died.”
Three other commanders from the adjacent province of Kerman were also killed, Fars reported.
Parliamentary Speaker Ali Larijani confirmed the officers’ death in an announcement to parliament that was broadcast on TV.
The Guards said foreign powers were behind the attack.
“The world arrogance, by provoking its lackeys and mercenaries in the region, carried out a terrorist attack on a popular meeting between the Guards and tribesmen,” the Guards said in a statement carried by local media.
Iranian officials and several government bodies term Western powers, including the US, as “world arrogance.”
“There is no doubt that this savage and inhuman act falls within the Satanic strategy of the foreigners and enemies of the regime who are trying to break the unity among the Shiites and Sunnis,” the statement said.
Aladdin Borujerdi, senior MP and head of parliament’s commission on national security and foreign policy, pointed the finger at US.
“The enemies of the Islamic revolution, especially the United States, is the main supporter of terrorist networks,” he was quoted as saying by Mehr news agency.
“This country has supported the Rigi network for a long time and the enemy’s aim is to attack the close relationship between the Guards and the people,” he said, referring to the shadowy Sunni group Jundallah (Soldiers of God) led by Abdolmalek Rigi.
Iranian officials have previously accused the UK and the US of supporting ethnic minority rebels of Jundallah operating in the sensitive border areas, especially in Sistan-Baluchestan Province.
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