A suicide attack targeting Iran’s Revolutionary Guards killed about 31 people, including at least five senior commanders, Iranian state television said.
More than two dozen were wounded in the attack, which the local prosecutor blamed on a Sunni rebel group in Iran’s restless southeast region near the border with Pakistan.
The Jundollah, or Soldiers of God — ethnic Baluch Sunni insurgents who have been blamed for previous attacks in the region — have claimed responsibility for the attack.
However, a statement from the Guards has accused America and its allies, including Britain, of complicity.
“Surely foreign elements, particularly those linked to the global arrogance, were involved in this attack,” said the statement, reported on the English-language Press TV. Iran often uses the term “global arrogance” to refer to the United States.
The US rejected the accusation as "completely false", and condemned the bombing.
The state broadcaster IRIB said that the bombing happened this morning at the entrance to a sports complex in Sarbaz in Sistan-Baluchestan, a province that is the scene of frequent clashes between security forces, Sunni rebels and drug traffickers.
Guards representatives were due to meet local tribal leaders to promote unity between Sunnis and Shias.
Press TV said that the bomber approached the Guards on foot and detonated his suicide bomb vest. A number of civilians were among the dead.
News agencies named the most high-ranking casualties as the deputy head of the Guards’ ground forces, General Nourali Shoushtari, and the Guards’ commander in Sistan-Baluchestan province, General Mohammadzadeh. General Shoushtari was also a senior official of the Guard’s elite Qods Force, reports said.
It was the most severe attack on the Guards in recent years and underlined deepening instability in the southeastern region bordering Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The Revolutionary Guards is an elite and politically influential military conglomerate seen as fiercely loyal to the values of the 1979 Islamic revolution. Numbering 120,000 troops with its own ground, naval and air units, its duties include handling security in sensitive border areas and control of Iran’s missile system programme.
It also commands vast financial resources and has stakes in many sectors of the Iranian economy, ranging from oil and gas to telecoms and farming.
Jundollah has an escalating history of violence, claiming responsibility for a bomb attack on a Shia mosque in Sistan-Baluchestan province in May that killed 25 people. Thirteen members of the faction were convicted of the bombing and hanged in July.
In 2007 the group abducted nine Iranian soldiers in the same region, demanding that Tehran free 16 imprisoned members of the group.
Iran has accused the US of backing Jundollah in order to create instability in the country. Washington denies the charge. Jundollah says that it is fighting for the rights of the Islamic Republic’s minority Sunnis.
Iran, a predominantly Shia country, also claims that there are links between Jundollah and the al-Qaeda network. Most people in Sistan-Baluchestan are Sunnis and ethnic Baluchis. Iran rejects allegations by Western rights groups that it discriminates against ethnic and religious minorities.
The fresh outbreak of internal unrest comes at a time when the Islamic Republic is being tested politically by a reform movement that refuses to go away. Mir Hossein Mousavi, the Iran opposition leader, pledged today that Iran’s reform movement would continue, despite harsh judicial reprisals by the State, and made a fresh plea for prisoners to be released.
“Our people are not rioters. Reforms will continue as long as people’s demands are not met,” Mr Mousavi’s website quoted him as saying.
Mr Mousavi was defeated in the presidential elections on June 12. He and other moderates claim that the vote was rigged to secure the re-election of hardline President Ahmadinejad. Iranian authorities deny the allegation.
More than 100 people, including former senior officials, still remain in jail, and at least one reformist has been sentenced to death.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/middle_east/article6879850.ece
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