Iran vows revenge on ‘mercenaries’ behind suicide attack

TEHRAN: President Hassan Rouhani vowed revenge Thursday against the "mercenary group" behind a suicide bombing which killed 27 people in southeastern Iran and accused the US and Israel of supporting "terrorism".

"We will certainly make this mercenary group pay for the blood of our martyrs," the official IRNA news agency quoted the Iranian president as saying in response to Wednesday’s attack. "The main root of terrorism in the region is America and Zionists, and some oil-producing countries in the region also financially support the terrorists," he added.

Rouhani was speaking at Tehran’s Mehrabad Airport before leaving for the Russian resort of Sochi for a summit with his Russian and Turkish counterparts Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the future of war-battered Syria. In comments reported by state television, Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the attack’s perpetrators were certainly linked to "the spying agencies of some regional and trans-regional countries." Wednesday’s attack, which targeted a busload of Revolutionary Guards in the volatile southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchistan, was one of the deadliest on Iranian security forces in years.