TEHRAN – Two suicide bomb attacks killed 39 people outside a mosque during a Shia religious ceremony in southeastern Iran yesterday, a strike Jundollah rebels said was retaliation for the execution of their leader in June.
In a statement on its website, the Sunni Muslim group said it was responsible for the bombings outside the Imam Hussein Mosque in Chabahar, which also wounded more than 100 people.
“At least 39 people were martyred after two suicide bombings targeted Shia mourners in front of a mosque in the town of Chabahar,” Fariborz Ayati Firouzabadi, head of the coroner’s office in the province, said.
The bombings killed many children and women, who were attending a Shia religious ceremony to commemorate the death of Prophet Muhammad’s grandson Hussein, state television reported, adding that the death toll was expected to increase.
The poor province of Sistan-Baluchistan, near Iran’s border with Pakistan and Afghanistan, has been the scene of unrest, with the mainly Sunni population claiming discrimination by the Shia authorities.
Iran’s interior minister, Mostafa Mohammad-Najjar, told state television that the attackers had links to neighbouring Pakistan and that an investigation was under way.
“A group of terrorists who were trained in Pakistan carried out the bombings ... we have informed Pakistani officials as well,” he said.
Jundollah meanwhile said the attack was in retaliation for the execution of its leader, Abdolmalek Rigi.
“This operation was in revenge for the execution of the leader of the movement, Abdolmalek, and other martyrs of Jundollah who were savagely hanged,” the group said on its website.
It carried the names and photographs of two young men identified as the suicide bombers and said they targeted the “regimes mercenaries and Revolutionary Guards”. – (Reuters)