|
Iran
Focus
 Tehran, Iran,
Apr. 05 – Iran claimed on
Wednesday that its security forces had killed twelve Iranian dissidents
belonging to a group that took responsibility for an armed attack in March on
a convoy of government officials in Iran’s
south-eastern province
of Sistan-va-Baluchistan.
The government-run news agency Fars quoted an
unnamed government official as saying that Abdolmalek
Reigi, the leader of the group calling itself Jondollah, and 11 members of his group were killed in
clashes with security forces on Iran’s
border with Afghanistan.
Hundreds of people have been arrested in Iran’s south-eastern province of
after the ambush on a government convoy carrying dozens of provincial
officials in March.
The majority of those arrested were Baluchis, a
predominantly Sunni Muslim ethnic minority, who the authorities have claimed
have ties to the attackers.
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.
Iran’s Interior Minister
also pointed the finger at Britain
and the United States
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, 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.
|