Second bomb injures Iranian police at scene of initial blast
Three Iranian police members were wounded on Tuesday after a bomb they were deployed to defuse detonated at the scene of an earlier explosion, an official told local media.
ERBIL (Kurdistan 24) – Three Iranian police members were wounded on Tuesday after a bomb they were deployed to defuse detonated at the scene of an earlier explosion, an official told local media.
The incident took place in Zahedan, the capital of Sistan and Baluchestan Province, a Sunni majority area that borders Pakistan, and a hotbed of long-standing militant as well as separatist activity in the country.
The first incident was caused by “a handmade explosive device,” prompting the dispatch of a bomb squad who found a second “suspicious package,” Mohamad Ghanbari, the province’s police chief, told semi-official Tasnim agency.
Before the unit could defuse the bomb, it exploded, injuring three police members, added Ghanbari. The wounds were reported to have been superficial, and the men were still being treated as of Tuesday night.
In a social media post following the two explosions, an offshoot of the jihadist Jundulla group (The Soldiers of God), a designated terrorist organization by Iran and the United States, Jaish al-Adl, claimed responsibility for the incident stating they had targeted a police station with “two powerful bombs.”
In October, the same group said they were behind the abduction of 12 Iranian security forces members operating near the Pakistani border.
According to Iran, both Jundulla and Jaish al-Adl have targeted and killed members of the army as well as civilians. The groups have mainly operated in the southeastern province of Sistan and Baluchestan, with Jundulla claiming to fight for the “equal rights of Sunni Muslims in Iran.”
In early December, a group tied to Jaish al-Adl claimed to have carried out a bombing in the port city of Chanbahar – approximately 460 kilometers south of Zahedan – that was reported to have killed at least four people and injured 48 others.
Baluchis, a majority of them Sunni, are the largest ethnic group in the province and have limited rights compared to the much smaller population of the Shia Sistani ethnicity, which Tehran favors for official posts, according to rights groups.
Editing by Nadia Riva