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Iran Focus
 London,
Mar. 26 – Hundreds of people have been arrested in Iran’s south-eastern
province of Sistan-va-Baluchistan after a deadly
ambush on a government convoy carrying dozens of top provincial officials, an
informed source in Tehran told Iran Focus.
The majority of those arrested are Baluchis, a
predominantly Sunni Muslim ethnic minority, who the authorities have claimed
have ties to the attackers. A group calling itself Jondollah
has claimed responsibility for the attack
Local state-run media have received instructions from the government not to
report the arrests on security grounds, the source, who asked to remain
anonymous, said.
Twenty-two Iranian government and provincial officials were killed and at
least seven, including the governor of the city of Zahedan, were
critically wounded in the ambush as their convoy was returning from Zabol to Zahedan in the early
hours of March 17. A further seven were taken hostage.
Hours after the attack, Iran’s
police chief, Brigadier General Ismaeil Ahmadi-Moqaddam, announced there was evidence that the
assailants had held meetings with British intelligence officers. On Thursday,
he said that authorities had identified those responsible for the attack.
Iran’s Interior Minister
also pointed the finger at Britain
and the United States
earlier this week for masterminding the attack.
The minister, radical Shiite cleric Mostafa Pour-Mohammadi, also claimed the people behind the attack were
the same as those behind a spate of bombings in Iran’s
south-western province
of Khuzestan earlier
this year and in 2005.
“What is clear about the recent events in Zabol and
Khuzistan is that those behind the attackers were
the same”, Pour-Mohammadi said.
“According to reports received, certain American and British security
officials have had meetings with certain leaders of bandits and have
encouraged them to carry out terrorist attacks [in Iran]”, he said.
Iran
has witnessed escalating unrest in recent months in areas populated by Baluchis, who complain of discriminatory and repressive
policies by the theocratic regime.
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