Two officers, four gunmen killed in attack on Iranian police station

TEHRAN: Two policemen were killed Saturday in Iran’s restive southeast near Pakistan, Iranian media said, in an attack claimed by jihadists that left four assailants dead.

The grenade attack and ensuing firefight at a police station was the latest violence to hit Sistan-Baluchistan province, where unrest has involved drug smuggling gangs, rebels from the Baluchi minority and Sunni Muslim extremist groups.

Also on Saturday, the Islamic Republic’s judiciary said two men were hanged in public over a deadly shooting last year at a revered shrine in the southern city of Shiraz.

In Zahedan, the Sistan-Baluchistan provincial capital, “four unidentified armed individuals attacked and entered police station Number 16,” state broadcaster IRIB reported, citing the province´s deputy head of security Alireza Marhamati. The attackers used grenades to blast open the gates of the police station, and an exchange of fire occurred, said Marhamati.

The jihadist Jaish al-Adl group, which was formed in 2012 and is blacklisted by Iran as a “terrorist” group, claimed responsibility, SITE Intelligence Group reported.

Tasnim news agency, quoting Sistan-Baluchistan police chief Doustali Jalilian, said two officers were killed in the clash. All four “terrorists” involved were killed, according to Iran’s official news agency IRNA, quoting an Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps branch that commands southeast Iran. The targeted police station is located near Zahedan’s Makki Mosque, where last year thousands protested following the alleged rape of a teenage girl in custody in the port city of Chabahar.

In its statement reported by SITE, Jaish al-Adl accused security forces of targeting protesters during the September rallies.