Tehran, Iran, Mar. 18 – Iran’s Interior Minister pointed the finger at Britain and the United States on Saturday for an armed attack in the south-eastern province of Sistan-va-Baluchistan in the town of Zabol which left 22 Iranian officials dead in the early hours of Friday morning.
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 assailants were the same”, Pour-Mohammadi told the state-run news agency ISNA.
“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.
Twenty-two Iranian government and provincial officials were killed and at least seven, including the governor of the nearby city of Zahedan, were critically wounded in the ambush as their convoy was returning from a gathering in Zabol to Zahedan. The Interior MinisterÂ’s comments mirrored remarks Friday by IranÂ’s paramilitary police chief, Brigadier General Ismaeil Ahmadi-Moqaddam, on state television that there was evidence the assailants had held meetings with British intelligence officers.
"Nice work, James. Her Majesty's Secret Service comes through again."
With an able assist from CIA, Felix." |
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 just like everyone else does of discriminatory and repressive policies by the theocratic regime. |