A suicide attack on Wednesday on a Revolutionary Guards bus in southeastern Iran killed at least 27 people, Tasnim news agency said.
“The suicide attack on an Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps personnel bus happened on the Khash-Zahedan road,” official news agency IRNA said. A picture released by the Fars news agency showed a hulk of twisted metal at the scene.
The Guards issued a statement confirming the attack. It said the troops were returning from the border. “In this suicide attack a car filled with explosives blew up besides a bus carrying a unit of the Guards ground forces causing the martyrdom and wounding of a number of the protectors of our Islamic homeland’s border.”
The attack took place in the volatile southeastern province of Sistan-Balochistan which has a large, mainly Sunni ethnic Balochi community which straddles the border with Pakistan.
The Sunni group Jaish al Adl (Army of Justice), which says it wants greater rights for the ethnic minority Baluchis, claimed responsibility for the attack, the semi-official Fars news agency reported.
A video posted by Fars showed blood and debris at the site of the attack on the road between the cities of Zahedan and Khash, a volatile area near the Pakistan border where militants and drug smugglers operate.
The explosion was so powerful that the bus was turned into a twisted pile of metal, a photo published on Fars showed.
While Jaish al Adl and other groups like it are not regarded as a major security threat, the attack is a fresh blow to the image of the Guards, the most powerful force in Iran, which reports directly to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Published in Daily Times, February 14th 2019.
