Three security personnel killed in 'terrorist attacks' in Iran: state media

Three security personnel, including the deputy of a police station, have been killed in "terrorist attacks" in Iran, state media reported Thursday, two days after seven Iranian Revolutionary Guards were killed in an air raid in Syria.

"Three security members have been martyred in several night-time terrorist attacks on military stations in the cities of Rask and Chabahar" in southeastern Sistan-Baluchistan province, Alireza Marhamati, deputy governor of the province, told state TV.

"In one of the attacks on police station number 11 of the city of Chabahar, deputy of the station Abbas Mir, was martyred," state broadcaster IRIB said, adding that a number of assailants were also killed or injured.

It also said that the jihadist Jaish al-Adl group, which was formed in 2012 and is blacklisted by Iran as a "terrorist" group, claimed responsibility for the attacks.

The attacks came less than 48 hours after an airstrike on the Iranian consular annex in Damascus killed seven Revolutionary Guards, two of them generals.

"The terrorists did not succeed in their goal of capturing the Guards headquarters in Chabahar and Rask and are under siege," Deputy Interior Minister Majid Mirahmadi told state TV.

"The terrorists are stationed around these headquarters and are shooting blindly, with the courageous members of the Guards and the police are confronting them," he added.

The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the ideological arm of Iran's military, has numerous stations in Sistan-Baluchistan province, which borders Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The province has for years faced unrest involving drug-smuggling gangs, rebels from the Baluchi minority, and Islamist extremists.

In December, 11 officers at a police headquarters in Rask were killed in one of the deadliest attacks in years.

Intense fighting continue around three hours after Baluchi militants attacked IRGC bases and police in two towns (Rask and Chabahar) in southeastern #Iran pic.twitter.com/fWbhh0Uslz

— Fazel Hawramy (@FazelHawramy) April 3, 2024

And last July, two policemen and four assailants were killed in another attack on a police station in Zahedan, the province's capital.

Zahedan, one of the few Sunni-majority cities in predominantly Shia Iran, was also the scene of months-long deadly protests that erupted in September 2022 over the alleged rape of a teenage girl by a police officer.

The deadly clashes in the city occurred as Iran faced nationwide protests following the death in custody of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, an Iranian Kurd arrested for an alleged breach of the Islamic republic's strict dress rules for women.

Hundreds of people were killed during the months-long rallies, including dozens of security forces, and thousands were arrested.

Nine men were executed in cases linked to the demonstrations which were labelled as foreign-instigated "riots" by Iranian authorities.