DUBAI / TEHRAN: Two attackers scaled the wall of a Basij paramilitary base and opened fire, killing one member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and wounding five others on a base in the southeastern town of Nik Shahr, Iranian media reported on Saturday, as the country holds official celebrations on the 40th anniversary of its Islamic revolution.
“A (paramilitary) Basij base in Nik Shahr came under ... fire this morning and several from the Revolutionary Guards communications personnel who were wiring the base were hit,” Mohammad Hadi Marashi, provincial deputy governor for security affairs, told the state news agency IRNA.
The attack happened during the morning flag raising at the base, the semi-official Fars news agency reported.
“Five of the Guards personnel were wounded and one was martyred,” Marashi said, adding that anniversary events were proceeding peacefully.
Nik Shahr’s prosecutor Mohsen Golmohammadi told the semi-official Mehr news agency the victim was a “member of the Guard” and identified him as Morteza Aliahmadi. He did not elaborate on Aliahmadi’s rank.
“Morteza Ali-Mohammadi was martyred in the incident and the five critically injured have been transferred to the hospital,” Golmohammadi told the semi-official YJC news agency.
He said both attackers escaped.
The semi-official news agency Tasnim said Jaish Al-Adl, a militant group, has claimed responsibility for the attack. State media said only that it was a “terrorist” attack, and held no particular group responsible.
The attack targeted a base of the Basij, a paramilitary force affiliated with the powerful Revolutionary Guards, in the city of Nik Shahr in Sistan-Baluchestan Province, which has long been plagued by unrest from both drug smuggling gangs and militants.
Last week, a double-bombing attack injured three policemen in front of a police station in the city of Zahedan, the provincial capital.
On Tuesday, Jaish Al-Adl, which is blacklisted as a terrorist group by Iran, claimed responsibility for the bombings on social media. Pakistan-based Baluchi separatists and drug traffickers have claimed responsibility for past attacks and often carry out cross-border raids in the province. The province has a large, mainly ethnic Baluchi community which straddles the border.
In December, a suicide car bomber struck a police headquarters in the port city of Chabahar, killing at least two police and wounding 42 others.
Jaish Al-Adl was formed in 2012 as a successor to the extremist group Jundallah, which waged a deadly insurgency against Iranian targets over the previous decade.
Iran began on Friday 10 days of state-sponsored celebrations marking the 1979 Islamic revolution which deposed Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, a secular king allied to the West.
US President Donald Trump last year pulled out of an international agreement under which Iran curbed its nuclear work in exchange for a sanctions relief. The reimposed sanctions led to a currency crash, rampant inflation and added to investors’ hesitancy about doing business there.
