TEHRAN: Iran was Friday probing twin suicide bombings in a crowded Shia mosque which slaughtered 27 people in an attack a shadowy Sunni rebel group said was to avenge the execution of its leader.
Thursday night’s bombings, which reportedly targeted members of Iran’s elite defense force, the Revolutionary Guards, struck the Jamia mosque in Zahedan, a southeastern city ravaged by a fierce Sunni insurgency for the past decade.
The bombers detonated their payloads as worshippers were celebrating the birthday of Imam Hussein, grandson of the Muslim Prophet Mohammed, on a day also annually observed as the Guards’ Day.
The attack "has left 27 people martyred and 270 wounded," Health Minister Marziah Vahid Dastjerdi told the Mehr news agency, adding that 11 of the wounded were in critical conditions.
Deputy Interior Minister Ali Abdollahi said members of the Guards were among the dead and wounded but gave no details.
Ali Mohammad Azad, the governor general of Sistan-Baluchestan, the province of which Zahedan is the capital, said Iran was "investigating who was behind the attack", which was claimed Friday by Sunni rebel group, Jundallah (Soldiers of God), as revenge for the hanging of its veteran leader Abdolmalek Rigi.
Rigi was executed on June 20 after Iranian warplanes intercepted a flight from the United Arab Emirates to Kyrgyzstan and security forces seized him.
Iran paraded Rigi before the cameras of the English-language state Press TV before hanging him in the capital’s notorious Evin prison last month.
In the recorded television appearance, dubbed a confession by the authorities, Rigi said he received offers of covert US military assistance.
"They (Americans) said they would cooperate with us and will give me military equipment," he said.
Iran said it had found Rigi responsible for "armed robbery, assassination attempts, armed attacks on the army and police and on ordinary people, and murder" and hailed a major blow against the "armed counter-revolutionary group."
Zahedan has been repeatedly hit by attacks blamed on Jundallah, which has been fighting for nearly a decade to secure rights for ethnic Sunni Baluchis who form a significant proportion of the population in the province.
"Jundallah announces to the people of Baluchestan and Iran that tonight (Thursday) two of its sons, in an unmatched operation striking at the heart of the Guards who had gathered in a mosque in Zahedan to celebrate Guards Day, were able to send more than a hundred of the Guards to hell," the group said in a statement posted on its http://junbish.blogspot.com/ website.
The group said Thursday’s bombings were carried out by two of its members, Abdulbasit Rigi and Mohammad Rigi.
"In the first phase of the operation Abdulbasit Rigi blew himself up among tens of Guards," the statement said.
"After intelligence, security service and military personnel surrounded the area, Mohammad Rigi blew himself up, sending to hell tens of others.
"This operation is in response to the non-stop atrocities in Baluchestan by the regime, which thought that through the martyrdom of Abdolmalek (Rigi) the fight will end," the statement added.
Zahedan MP Hossein Ali Shahriari told the Fars news agency that one of the bombers was a man dressed as a woman.
On Friday, an angry Shahriari submitted his resignation to parliament, blaming Tehran for the poor security in the restive province, Mehr reported.
"The officials have failed to fulfill their minimum duty which is to provide security there … so I submit my resignation," Shahriari said.
Tehran has long charged that the group has received backing from Washington as part of its efforts to undermine the Islamic regime.
Some Western media reported similar allegations of support for the group from the former administration of George W. Bush after he singled Tehran out for regime change as part of an "axis of evil", alongside Stalinist North Korea and now executed Dictator Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.
But while Jundallah insists that its attacks have been aimed at military targets, particularly Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards Corps, they have claimed a growing civilian death toll and US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was quick to speak out against the latest bombings.
"I condemn in the strongest possible terms today’s terrorist attacks claimed by Jundallah that targeted Iranians at a mosque in the Sistan-Baluchestan province of Iran," Clinton said in a statement.
Television footage of the attacks showed blood and flesh splattered on walls of the mosque and several body parts scattered in and around the building.
The mosque at the time was crowded with worshippers, among them members of the Revolutionary Guards, an elite military force formed shortly after the 1979 revolution to defend the purity of the country’s Islamic system.
Jundallah has carried out several such deadly attacks in the province, many of them targeting the Guards.
It claimed a suicide bombing last October that killed at least 42 people, including seven Guards commanders, in the town of Pisheen in Sistan-Baluchestan which borders Afghanistan and Pakistan.
It also claimed a May 28, 2009 bombing against Shia Amir Al-Momenin mosque in Zahedan in which more than 20 people were killed and 50 wounded.
In July last year, Iran hanged 13 of its members in a mass prison execution, terming them "enemies of God" after convicting them of a string of offences, including kidnapping foreigners.
