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, Iranian officials said.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 is 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.
| oh and forget what I said about war commanders, 'kay? |
'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.
| Bandits, Balochis, insurgents, dissidents ... what's the dif??? depends a lot on what the "hardline Sunni group" is. |