Iran Focus: Tehran, Iran, Aug. 22 The military commander of Iranshahr region in south-eastern Iran was killed on Saturday during a counter-insurgency operation in Sistan and Balouchistan Province, a security official said on Monday. Eleven other agents of the para-military police force were injured in a shootout between security forces and local rebels, Revolutionary Guards Colonel Mohammad Arab said. He described the rebels as armed insurgents. Iran Focus
Tehran, Iran, Aug. 22 The military commander of Iranshahr region in south-eastern Iran was killed on Saturday during a counter-insurgency operation in Sistan and Balouchistan Province, a security official said on Monday.
Eleven other agents of the para-military police force were injured in a shootout between security forces and local rebels, Revolutionary Guards Colonel Mohammad Arab said. He described the rebels as armed insurgents.
The confrontation took place close to the border between Iran and Pakistan.
The Border Regiment of the State Security Forces had dispatched several units to the Nagoor region to engage armed insurgents in the area, Arab told the official news agency, IRNA. Colonel Gholam-Ali Beygi, military commander of Iranshahr, was martyred in the ensuing clashes.
The Revolutionary Guards officer said four rebels had been killed in the shootout.
Sistan and Balouchistan Province is home to Balouchis, a predominantly Sunni Muslim ethnic minority. Iran has witnessed escalating unrest in recent months in provinces populated by the countrys Kurdish, Arab and Balouchi minorities, who complain of discriminatory and repressive policies by the Shiite clerics who rule Iran.
