TEHRAN (Reuters) – An explosion at an Iranian military training base killed and injured several servicemen on Tuesday, the website of Iran’s English-language Press TV reported.
The report did not make clear how many people were killed or injured but said the explosion, which occurred roughly three weeks after a deadly bomb blast at a military parade in northwestern Iran, was caused “by accident.”
The explosion happened at a base in Khoramabad in western Iran, according to Iranian media. Press TV said firefighters and rescue teams were sent to the scene and the injured were rushed to hospital.
The blast at the parade in late September, which killed 12 people and injured 80, occurred in the city of Mahabad. Iranian authorities blamed it on “anti-revolutionary” militants backed by foreign enemies.
Days after that attack, Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards said they had killed about 30 people who were behind it.
Analysts have said attacks could raise pressure on President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose government has been plagued by political infighting and economic woes linked in part to foreign sanctions imposed due to Iran’s disputed nuclear program.
No group claimed responsibility for the blast in Mahabad, which occurred during an annual ceremony for the Iranian armed forces to commemorate Iran’s 8-year war with Iraq in the 1980s.
But several armed groups hostile to the establishment are active in Iran, including Kurdish separatists in the northwest, Baluch militants in the southeast and some Arabs in the southwest.
The Sunni Muslim Jundollah militant group, which Iran says has links to al Qaeda, is the most active. it claimed a double suicide attack on July 15 which killed 28 people, including Revolutionary Guards.
Last week, five Iranians, including four members of the security forces, were killed and nine injured when gunmen opened fire on a police patrol in the capital of Iran’s Kurdistan province, the scene of frequent clashes between Kurdish guerrillas and Iranian forces.
(Writing by Noah Barkin)
