TEHRAN – Twelve people were killed and dozens injured yesterday when a bomb exploded among a crowd watching a military parade in northwestern Iran.
Some 35 people were wounded, 15 critically, in the blast in the city of Mahabad, in a predominantly Kurdish area near the borders of Iraq and Turkey, the ISNA news agency reported.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but local officials blamed “anti-revolutionary” militants, possibly helped by foreign countries wishing to harm the Islamic Republic during “Sacred Defence” celebrations – an annual ceremony for the Iranian military.
“This bomb was a time-bomb planted on a tree among the people,” the website of state-run television IRIB quoted a military official as saying.
“Counter-revolutionary groups, by inserting themselves among the people attending the armed forces parade, showed their heinous face,” said Vahid Jalalzadeh, the provincial governor of Iran’s West Azerbaijan province.
The blast occurred some 50m from the podium, and the wives of two military officials were among the dead, he said. No casualties were reported among military personnel and political dignitaries present. The attack occurred as President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was in New York attending the UN General Assembly amid a dispute between Tehran and major powers over Iran’s nuclear programme.
On August 4th an explosive went off near Mr Ahmadinejad’s motorcade as he travelled to the western city of Hamadan. He was unharmed, and officials claimed the blast was just a firecracker.
Several armed groups hostile to the government are active in Iran, including Kurdish separatists in the northwest, Baluch militants in the southeast and some Arabs in the southwest.
The Sunni Muslim Jundollah Baluch militant group, which Iran says has links to al-Qaeda, is the most active. It claimed a double suicide attack on July 15th that killed 28 people was in revenge for the execution of its leader.
Iranian media have often reported clashes between government forces and Kurdish guerrillas said to be members of Party of Free Life of Kurdistan, an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers Party, which took up arms in 1984 for an ethnic homeland in southeast Turkey and northwest Iran. – (Reuters)