Baku, Azerbaijan, Oct. 11
By Umid Niayesh - Trend:
Iranian security forces have arrested 14 gunmen involved in attacks in the city of Saravan in the southeastern province of Sistan and Baluchestan.
The arrested persons are linked to the 2 attacks made by armed Baluchi rebels, who left 4 police officers dead, the provincial Police Chief Brigadier General Hossein Rahimi said, Tasnim news agency reported Oct. 11.
Some 3 officers were killed along with other patrol police forces under attack by armed rebels while on a mission in the city of Saravan, the police commander said.
Following the incident, the security forces identified and arrested a number of the "terrorists," which prompted them to fire rockets in retaliation on a border base in Saravan, Rahimi said. He added that another police officer was killed in the incident.
The region already witnessed several clashes between the rebel groups and Iran's security forces.
On Sept. 9 Iran's Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) thwarted armed Baluchi rebel's attack on a border base in Saravan.
The rebels were trying to seize the border base, however, the IRGC forces alongside with Baluchi Basijis (volunteer militia) repelled the attack, the IRGC said.
Iran's Baluchi group, Jaish al-Adl said that it remotely blew up a vehicle carrying 600 kilograms of explosives inside the border base.
Jaish al-Adl kidnapped 5 Iranian border guards on Feb. 6 in the province.
On March 23, the group tweeted that it had hanged Jamshid Danayeefar, one of the 5 kidnapped guards. The other guards were released later on April 4.
On October 25, 2013, the group killed 14 Iranian border guards and wounded 6 others in the border region near Saravan.
Both Iran and Pakistan have declared Jaish al-Adl a terrorist group. The group's former leader, Abdolmalek Rigi was captured by Iranian security forces and executed in 2010 on charges of "armed robbery, assassination attempts, armed attacks on the army and police and on ordinary people, and murder."