At Least 10 Killed in Attack on Military Parade in Iran

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Gunmen killed at least 24 people and wounded 53 others on Saturday in an attack on a military parade in Iran, state media reported, in a restive province that is home to most of the country’s Arab minority.

The Islamic Republic News Agency reported the casualty figures at the parade in Ahvaz, in Southwestern Iran, and said that, with many of the wounded in critical condition, the death toll was expected to rise.

The dead and injured were a mix of Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps soldiers and civilian onlookers, multiple semiofficial news agencies reported. They said there were four gunmen, wearing military uniforms, and that security forces had killed two and captured the other two.

The reports quoted some officials as blaming the assault on Arab separatists. State television described the attackers as “takfiri,” a term often used to describe Islamic State fighters.

But the Iranian foreign minister, Javad Zarif, wrote on Twitter that “terrorists recruited, trained, armed & paid by a foreign regime” were responsible, and that “Iran holds regional terror sponsors and their US masters accountable.”

Videos and photographs posted online reportedly showed the attack and its aftermath — civilians and soldiers dropping to the pavement, shouting and running for cover as gunfire crackles in the background, and later carrying away wounded and bleeding survivors, including children.

Some reports said the gunmen had tried and failed to reach the reviewing stand set up on a wide boulevard, where military commanders were watching the parade pass by.

Ahvaz, a city of more than a million people and the capital of Khuzestan Province, has been a center of antigovernment protest recently, plagued by drought, dust storms, unemployment and air pollution. The province, which borders Iraq to the west and the Persian Gulf to the south, dominates Iranian oil production, but local residents have complained that not enough of the revenue is invested there.

Arab separatist groups have operated sporadically in the region for years, and previous attacks have been attributed to them.

The parade was one of several held around the country to mark the start of Sacred Defense Week, which commemorates Iran’s 1980-88 war with Iraq.

Follow Richard Pérez-Peña on Twitter: @perezpena.





Source : Nytimes