No fewer than 10 police officers were killed in a “terrorist attack” in an area of Southeastern Iran long plagued by unrest, local media reported on Saturday.
The Mehr and Tasnim news agencies stated that they were murdered following an attack on “police vehicles” in Sistan-Baluchistan province’s Taftan county but did not specify how the attack was conducted.
No terrorist group immediately claimed credit for the attack, which occurred some 1,200 kilometres (745 miles) southeast of Tehran.
The official IRNA news agency, quoting a police statement, reported the death of “10 personnel in two patrol units” in what it described as an ambush.
Sistan-Baluchistan, which borders Pakistan and Afghanistan, is one of the poorest provinces in the Islamic Republic.
It is home to a sizable Baluch minority, an ethnic group spanning across Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan that practices Sunni Islam in contrast to the country’s primarily Shiite majority.
The area has seen periodic battles between Iranian security forces and rebels from the Baluch minority, extreme Sunni groups, and drug dealers. Saturday’s strike was among the worst in the area in recent months.
In early October, at least six persons, including police officers, were slain in two separate attacks in the province.
In a Telegram message, the Pakistan-based Sunni jihadist group Jaish al-Adl, or Army of Justice in Arabic, claimed responsibility for the two attacks.
Baluch separatists formed the group in 2012, and both Iran and the United States consider it a “terrorist organisation.”
Iran and Pakistan routinely blame one another for allowing rebel groups to operate and launch strikes from their respective territories.
According to Mehr, Iran launched a strike in Pakistan in mid-January, targeting the headquarters of Jaish al-Adl.
The group’s members, who identify as “soldiers of Allah,” frequently urge for “armed jihad” against the Islamic republic.
