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22 killed at Iran border
At least 21 people have been killed by gunmen near Iran's border with Afghanistan on Thursday night, the official IRNA news agency has reported. Iranian Police Commander Gen Esmail Ahmadi-Moqaddam said the gunmen posed as police and closed the Zabol-Zahedan road in Sistan-Baluchistan Province. Gen Ahmadi-Moqaddam said US and British intelligence were behind the attack. Correspondents say the Iran-Afghanistan border area is notorious for drug trafficking and kidnappings. Speaking to reporters shortly after landing at Zahedan's airport on Friday morning, Gen Ahmadi-Moqaddam said the gunmen had closed the Zabol-Zahedan road at around 2100 (1730 GMT) on Thursday night. "People thought they were Iranian police," he said. After killing the civilians the attacks had fled across the border to Afghanistan, he added. Gen Ahmadi-Moqaddam said he had information indicating that US and UK intelligence services had held meetings with the gunmen. "The said intelligence services had instructed the local bandits on ways of undermining security in the region," he said. "It seems that they are pursuing the same policy that they did in the Iraqi town of Samarra, that is, to provoke fighting between Shias and Sunnis." The US and UK have troops stationed in southern Afghanistan as part of a Nato peacekeeping force. Additional: Iran Focus Tehran, Iran, Mar. 17 Twenty-two Iranian government and provincial officials were killed in an ambush in the south-eastern province of Sistan-va-Baluchistan in the early hours of Friday morning, the government-owned news agency Fars reported. The incident occurred at 1:20 am as a convoy packed with officials was returning from a gathering in Zabol to the city of Zahedan. Unidentified gunmen opened fire on the convoy close to Shileh Bridge killing 22 and injuring seven officials, the report said. Among those injured in the attack was believed to be the governor of Zahedan, Hossein-Ali Nouri. The report said that he was shot five times and is in critical condition. The head of security of the Zahedan governorate also died in the attack. The report quoted an informed source in a hospital in Zabol as saying that 50 individuals were killed or injured in the attack.
Sistan-va-Baluchistan Province is home to Baluchis, a predominantly Sunni Muslim ethnic minority. Iran has witnessed escalating unrest in recent months in areas populated by Baluchis, who complain of discriminatory and repressive policies by the Shiite clerics who rule the country. Additional: Middle East Online By Farhad Pouladi - TEHRAN Afghan bandits with links to US and British security services have killed 22 people in Iran and seized an unknown number of others in an ambush that also left a senior official critically wounded, officials said Friday. Police said "a group of armed bandits who crossed the Afghanistan border killed 21 people and injured another seven innocent people driving in their vehicles" between the border city of Zabol and Zahedan, the provincial capital of Sistan-Baluchistan. The southeastern province's deputy governor general for security, Mohsen Sadeghi, later raised the death toll to 22 and said that, "according to the reports we got, one of the seven injured people is in a critical condition." A source in the interior ministry said: "Hossein Ali Nouri, the governor of Zahedan and his deputy have been critically wounded and both are in intensive care in hospital." According to some Iranian news agencies, Nouri and his deputy were shot several times in the chest and abdomen.
The interior ministry source, speaking on condition of anonymity, added that "apparently a number of people have been taken hostage. "Iran is seriously pursuing the case, and that's why the head of police is here to command the search for the bandits," he added. The officials were returning to Zahedan after attending a ceremony of war commanders in Zabol, the reports added. "A number of victim's families have told us that their relatives have been taken hostage, but we cannot confirm it yet," he added. Iran's police commander, Brigadier General Esmail Ahmadi-Moqaddam, told state television "we have information that the bandits in Sistan-Baluchistan area had some meetings with the British and the American security services. "These services have dictated plans to the bandits on how to destabilise the area. They are trying to spread disputes between Shiites and Sunnis. This is a terrorist action against innocent civilians," he told reporters upon arriving at Zahedan's airport. Ahmadi-Moqaddam said the bandits had killed Shiites, who were stopped at a mock checkpoint. "There is the possibility that the bandits have escaped to Afghanistan since the area is close to the border," he added. Sistan-Baluchistan, a mostly Sunni Muslim province in predominantly Shiite Iran, is notoriously lawless and is a key transit route for opium and other drugs from Afghanistan and Pakistan headed for Europe and the Gulf. Some three month ago, a group of Iranian soldiers was kidnapped near the border with Pakistan by a hardline Sunni Muslim group operating in the unruly border area. They were later released. Iranian officials and media had initially said the kidnappers were bandits, drug traffickers or dissident tribesmen. Posted by: Steve 2006-03-17 |
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