Attackers on government convoy identified – Iran police chief

Iran Focus: Tehran, Iran, Mar. 23 – Iran’s paramilitary police chief announced that Tehran had identified those responsible for an armed attack in the south-eastern province of Sistan-va-Baluchistan which left 22 Iranian officials dead last Friday. Iran Focus

Tehran, Iran, Mar. 23 – Iran’s paramilitary police chief announced that Tehran had identified those responsible for an armed attack in the south-eastern province of Sistan-va-Baluchistan which left 22 Iranian officials dead last Friday.

“Those responsible for the terrorist attack in Sistan-va-Baluchistan have been identified and introduced to the Pakistani and Afghan police via Interpol”, Brigadier General Ismaeil Ahmadi-Moqaddam told the government-run news agency Fars on Wednesday.

Ahmadi-Moqaddam said that the assailants had fled Iran to parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan not fully under the control of those countries’ security forces.

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 a gathering in Zabol to Zahedan.

Hours after the attack took place, Ahmadi-Moqaddam announced there was evidence the assailants had held meetings with British intelligence officers.

Iran’s Interior Minister also pointed the finger at Britain and the United States earlier this week for masterminding the attack.

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 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.

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 of discriminatory and repressive policies by the theocratic regime.