A armed attack perpetrated by separatists against a police station in a city in the southeastern Iran killed 19 peopleincluding four members of the elite force, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards, the Iranian state news agency IRNA reported on Saturday.
The attackers hid among worshipers near a mosque in the city of Zahedan and attacked the nearby police station on Friday, the report added.
A total of 19 people were killed, Hossein Modaresi, the provincial governor, was quoted as saying by IRNA. He said 32 Guardsmen, including Basiji’s volunteer forces, were also injured in the clashes.
It was not immediately clear whether the armed attack was related to anti-government protests across Iran after the death in police custody of a young Iranian woman.
Thousands of Iranians have taken to the streets in the last two weeks to protest the death of Mahsa Amini.a 22-year-old woman who had been arrested by the morality police in the capital of Tehran for allegedly wearing the mandatory Islamic veil too loosely.
Sistan and Baluchistan province borders Afghanistan and Pakistan and has seen previous attacks on security forces by ethnic Baluchi separatists, though Saturday’s report did not identify a separatist group allegedly involved in the attack.
IRNA on Saturday identified the dead as Hamidreza Hashemi, a colonel in the Revolutionary Guards; Mohammad Amin Azarshokr, member of the Guard; Mohamad Amin Arefi, a Basiji, or volunteer force; and Saeed Borhan Rigi, also a Basiji.
Iranian state-linked media reported on Friday that the head of the Guard’s intelligence department, Seyyed Ali Mousavi, was shot during the attack and later died.
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