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IRAN-UNREST-WRAP
Militants attack Iran army parade killing eight troops: state media
TEHRAN, Sept 22, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – Militants attacked a military parade in
southwestern Iran on Saturday, killing at least eight troops and wounding
some 20 others, state media reported.
“Eight to nine of the military forces were martyred and more than 20 were
injured. The injured are in a crucial state,” the deputy governor of
Khuzestan province, Ali-Hossein Hosseinzadeh Hosseinzadeh, told the semi-
official news agency ISNA.
Two gunmen opened fire on the large crowd of spectators watching the parade
in the city of Ahvaz and then attempted to attack the viewing stand for
official dignitaries before being shot and wounded by security forces, the
semi-official Fars news agency said.
A woman and a child were among the people wounded in the attack by a “group
of assailants,” the official IRNA news agency reported.
The rare attack targeted Khuzestan, a province bordering Iraq that has a
large ethnic Arab community, many of them Sunni, and was a major battleground
of the devastating 1980-88 conflict between Iran and Saddam Hussein’s Iraq.
Saturday’s rally was one of many in cities across Iran held to mark the
anniversary of the launch of the war with massive Iraqi air strikes.
Attacks by Kurdish rebels on military patrols along the border in mainly
ethnic Kurdish areas further north are relatively common.
But attacks on regime targets inside major cities are far rarer.
On June 7, 2017, 17 people were killed and dozens wounded in simultaneous
attacks in Tehran on the parliament building and on the tomb of revolutionary
leader Ruhollah Khomeini — the first inside Iran claimed by the Sunni Muslim
extremists of the Islamic Strate group.
In April, 26 alleged IS jihadists went on trial on charges connected with
that twin attack.
The judiciary-linked Mizan news agency said several of the accused were
Iranians who had left to join IS in neighbouring countries and then returned.
Five attackers were killed on the day, but police said at the time that
five people had been arrested at the scene of the attacks in central and
south Tehran.
Dozens more arrests were reported in the following months — many in
operations along the borders with Iraq and Turkey.
– Rouhani defiant –
The attack in Ahvaz came as Iranian President Hassan Rouhani was among the
dignitaries at the main anniversary parade in Tehran.
In a keynote speech, Rouhani vowed to boost Iran’s ballistic missile
capabilities despite Western concerns that were cited by his US counterpart
Donald Trump in May when he abandoned a landmark nuclear deal with Tehran.
“We will never decrease our defensive capabilities… we will increase them
day by day,” Rouhani said at a military parade. “The fact that the missiles
anger you shows they are our most effective weapons,” he said, referring to
the West.
Iran has ballistic missiles with a range of up to 3,500 kilometres (2,200
miles), enough to reach both Israel and US bases in the Middle East.
The United States reimposed crippling sanctions on Iran last month, and a
new round of even harsher sanctions targeting Iran’s vital oil sector is set
to go back into effect on November 5.
Washington has said that it is ready to open talks on a new agreement to
replace the July 2015 accord, but Tehran has said repeatedly it cannot
negotiate under the pressure of the sanctions.
Washington insists any deal should address Iran’s ballistic missile
programme and its “destabilising” and “malign” influence in the region, as
well as concerns about it long-term nuclear ambitions.
Trump and Rouhani will both be in New York next week for the United Nations
General Assembly.
But Iran has repeatedly ruled out any meeting.
Rouhani likened the present situation faced by Iran to that the fledgling
Islamic republic was confronted by in 1980.
He said that just as Trump had now torn up the nuclear accord, so then
Saddam tore up the so-called Algiers agreement of 1975 which demarcated a
section of the common border in Iran’s favour in return for an end to years
of Iranian support for Iraqi Kurdish rebels.
“What happened to Saddam then will happen to the United States,” he warned.
BSS/AFP/GMR/1410 hrs