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.
Polish presidential candidates offered different visions of Poland and its relations with Ukraine in a televised debate ahead of next week’s run-off, which remains on a knife-edge. During a head-to-head debate lasting two hours, centrist Warsaw Mayor Rafal Trzaskowski, from Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk’s governing pro-European coalition, faced the Eurosceptic historian Karol Nawrocki, backed by the right-wing populist Law and Justice party (PiS). The two candidates, who qualified for the second round after coming in the top two places in the first vote on Sunday last week, clashed over Poland’s relations with Ukraine, EU policy and the track records of their
UNSCHEDULED VISIT: ‘It’s a very bulky new neighbor, but it will soon go away,’ said Johan Helberg of the 135m container ship that run aground near his house A man in Norway awoke early on Thursday to discover a huge container ship had run aground a stone’s throw from his fjord-side house — and he had slept through the commotion. For an as-yet unknown reason, the 135m NCL Salten sailed up onto shore just meters from Johan Helberg’s house in a fjord near Trondheim in central Norway. Helberg only discovered the unexpected visitor when a panicked neighbor who had rung his doorbell repeatedly to no avail gave up and called him on the phone. “The doorbell rang at a time of day when I don’t like to open,” Helberg told television
‘A THREAT’: Guyanese President Irfan Ali called on Venezuela to follow international court rulings over the region, whose border Guyana says was ratified back in 1899 Misael Zapara said he would vote in Venezuela’s first elections yesterday for the territory of Essequibo, despite living more than 100km away from the oil-rich Guyana-administered region. Both countries lay claim to Essequibo, which makes up two-thirds of Guyana’s territory and is home to 125,000 of its 800,000 citizens. Guyana has administered the region for decades. The centuries-old dispute has intensified since ExxonMobil discovered massive offshore oil deposits a decade ago, giving Guyana the largest crude oil reserves per capita in the world. Venezuela would elect a governor, eight National Assembly deputies and regional councilors in a newly created constituency for the 160,000
North Korea has detained another official over last week’s failed launch of a warship, which damaged the naval destroyer, state media reported yesterday. Pyongyang announced “a serious accident” at Wednesday last week’s launch ceremony, which crushed sections of the bottom of the new destroyer. North Korean leader Kim Jong-un called the mishap a “criminal act caused by absolute carelessness.” Ri Hyong-son, vice department director of the Munitions Industry Department of the Party Central Committee, was summoned and detained on Sunday, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) reported. He was “greatly responsible for the occurrence of the serious accident,” it said. Ri is the fourth person
RSS