close
close

Mondor Festival

News with a Local Lens

Iranian news: attack on police kills 10 officers
minsta

Iranian news: attack on police kills 10 officers

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates –

An attack on an Iranian police convoy Saturday in the southern province of Sistan-Baluchestan killed at least 10 police officers, authorities said.

Details remain scarce about the attack in Gohar Kuh, about 1,200 kilometers (745 miles) southeast of the Iranian capital, Tehran.

Initially, reports simply described an attack carried out by “miscreants”, without further information. But soon after, Iranian state media announced that 10 police officers had been killed.

HalVash, an advocacy group for Baloch people from Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan, posted photos and videos of what appears to be a broken-down truck painted with the green stripe used by Iranian police vehicles. A graphic photo shared by the group showed what appeared to be the bodies of two police officers in the front seat of the truck.

HalVash said the attack appeared to target two security force vehicles and that all those transporting them were killed. The truck only appeared to have suffered damage from bullets, rather than an explosive being used.

The official IRNA news agency said Eskandar Momeni, the country’s interior minister, had ordered an investigation into the incident which it described as having caused the “martyrdom of a number of police officers”. .

Authorities have not identified any immediate suspects for the attack, and no group has claimed responsibility. The assault came after Israel launched a major attack across Iran early Saturday morning.

The Baloch regions of the three countries have faced a low-intensity insurgency by Baloch nationalists for more than two decades. Verifying information remains difficult in Iranian Sistan-Baluchistan, the scene of violence involving heroin traffickers for decades.

Meanwhile, the Taliban said it was investigating reports that Afghan migrants were killed by Iranian security forces in the region in early October, an incident that threatened to further strain relations between the nations.


Associated Press writer Amir Vahdat in Tehran, Iran, contributed to this report.