DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — At least 19 people, including four members of Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, were killed when armed separatists attacked a police station in a southeastern city, Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency said Saturday.
According to reports, on Friday, the attackers hid among worshipers near a mosque in the city of Zahedan and attacked a nearby police station.
19 people were killed, IRNA reported, citing the governor of the province, Hossein Modaresi. The source said 32 Rangers, including volunteer Basiji forces, were also injured in the clashes.
It was not immediately clear whether the attack was related to the nationwide anti-government protests that have gripped Iran since the death of a young Iranian woman in police custody.
Sistan and Baluchistan province borders Afghanistan and Pakistan and has previously seen attacks on security forces by ethnic Baluchi separatists, although a Tasnim report on Saturday did not identify the separatist group allegedly involved in the attack.
IRNA confirmed the dead on Saturday as Colonel Hamidreza Hashemi of the Revolutionary Guard Corps; Mohammad Amin Azershokr, member of the Guard; Mohamad Amin Arefi, a volunteer force with the Basiji or IRG; and Said Borhan Rigi, also Basici.
Tasnim and other state-run Iranian news agencies reported on Friday that Seyed Ali Mousavi, the head of the Guards’ Intelligence Directorate, was shot and later died in the attack.
It is not unusual for IRG members to be in police bases around the country.
Chief of the Guard, General. Hossein Salami said that he will take revenge for the killing of the Revolutionary Guard Corps forces in Zahedan. IRNA reports that “We consider the revenge of the blood of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the martyrs of Basij and the victims of the Black Friday crime in Zahidan to be on our agenda.”
Over the past two weeks, thousands of Iranians have taken to the streets in the capital Tehran to protest the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman who was detained by morality police for allegedly wearing the mandatory Islamic hijab too revealingly. .
Protesters voiced their anger at the treatment of women in the Islamic Republic and the wider repression. The nationwide demonstrations quickly turned into calls for the overthrow of the clerical establishment that has ruled Iran since the 1979 Islamic revolution.
Supporters of various ethnic groups, including Kurdish opposition movements operating on the border with neighboring Iraq in the northwest, gathered for the protests. Amini was an Iranian Kurd and the protests first started in Kurdish areas.
Iranian state television said at least 41 protesters and police have been killed since the demonstrations began. 17. According to the official statements of the Associated Press agency, at least 14 people died and more than 1,500 demonstrators were arrested.
Also on Friday, Iran said it had arrested nine foreigners linked to the protests, which authorities blamed on hostile foreign entities without providing evidence.
The scale of the protests, especially outside Tehran, has been difficult to gauge. Iranian media covered the demonstrations only occasionally.
Scattered protests involving dozens of demonstrators took place around a university in central Tehran on Saturday, witnesses said. The riot police dispersed the protesters chanting “death to the dictator”. Some witnesses said that the police used tear gas.
Meanwhile, the leader of the Iranian opposition, Mirhossein Mousavi, reminded the Iranian armed forces of their duty to the lives and rights of people.
Mousavi’s Green Movement protested Iran’s disputed 2009 presidential election with unrest not seen since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
“It is clear that your ability is to protect the people, not to oppress people, to defend the oppressed, to serve powerful people and oppressors.”
