Two rebel suicide bombers killed at least 28 people, including elite Revolutionary Guards, at a prominent Shiite Muslim mosque in southeast Iran, weeks after a Sunni rebel leader was hanged in the region.
The Sunni Muslim rebel group Jundollah said it set off the bombs in the Islamic state on Thursday, telling Al-Arabiya television in an e-mail it carried them out in retaliation for Iran’s execution last month of the group’s leader, Abdolmalek Rigi.
Jundollah says it fights for the rights of Iran’s Sunni Muslim minority. The clerical leadership accuses its arch foe, the US, of backing Jundollah in order to create instability in Iran. Washington denies the charge.
PHOTO: EPA
The powerful bombs exploded near the city of Zahedan’s Grand Mosque, scattering body parts around the holy site, and Jundollah said they were carried out by relatives of Rigi and were aimed at a Revolutionary Guards gathering.
“The group said the suicide attacks were carried out by Abdolbaset Rigi and Mohammad Rigi ... and warned of more operations to come,” Dubai-based Al-Arabiya said.
Senior lawmaker Alaeddin Boroujerdi blamed Washington for the attacks, saying the US should be held accountable for the “terrorist acts in Zahedan” because of its support for Jundollah, the official IRNA news agency said.
“In the two explosions in Zahedan at least 28 people were killed and over 169 were injured,” Mansour Shakiba, head of the Medical School at Sistan-Baluchestan Province, told the semi-official Mehr news agency.
Iranian Deputy Interior Minister in charge of security, Ali Abdollahi, said “a number of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards were killed and injured,” the semi-official Fars news agency reported.
Iran announced three days of public mourning in the province, IRNA said.
Predominantly Shiite Muslim Iran arrested Rigi in February, four months after Jundollah claimed responsibility for a bombing that 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 Washington, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton condemned the attacks “in the strongest possible terms.”
“This attack, along with the recent attacks in Uganda, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq and Algeria, underscores the global community’s need to work together to combat terrorist organizations that threaten the lives of innocent civilians all around the world,” Clinton said in a statement.
Iran says Jundollah has links to Sunni Islamist al-Qaeda and in the past has accused Pakistan, Britain and the US of backing Jundollah to create instability in southeast Iran.
All three countries have denied this, and Jundollah denies having any links with al-Qaeda.
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