Blast Hits Police Car in Iran’s Zahedan; Casualties Reported

An explosion caused by a suspected landmine hit a police car in the southeastern Iranian city of Zahedan, according to local independent media, four days after a deadly attack on a police station in the same province of Sistan and Baluchistan.

The December 19 blast in the Galogah area caused casualties, the reports said, without providing further details.

The Sunni jihadist group Ansar al-Furqan claimed responsibility in a brief statement, asserting that the vehicle belonged to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).

Officials did not immediately comment on the incident.

On December 15, state television reported that at least 11 police officers were killed in an overnight assault on a police station in the city of Rask, also in Sistan and Baluchistan.

That attack was claimed by the Sunni militant group Jaish al-Adl.

The impoverished province of Sistan and Baluchistan borders Afghanistan and Pakistan. It is home to a Sunni Baluch minority of up to 2 million people in a country where the population is predominantly Shia.

Human rights groups say the Baluch population and other minorities in Iran face widespread discrimination in the judicial system and their everyday lives, with the authorities curtailing their access to education, employment, adequate housing and political office.

Unrest in Sistan and Baluchistan province has involved drugs-smuggling gangs, Baluch rebels and Sunni extremists.

The provincial capital, Zahedan, was the scene of months-long deadly protests that erupted in September last year.