Gunmen attacked a military parade in the southwestern Iranian city of
Ahvaz on Saturday, killing 29 and wounding 53, Iran's state-run IRNA news agency said.
The IRNA report said those wounded in the attack on Saturday included a woman and a child.
Earlier reports described the assailants as "Takfiri gunmen", a term previously used to describe the Islamic State group.
The semi-official Fars news agency, which is close to the elite Revolutionary Guard, said two gunmen on a motorcycle wearing khaki uniforms carried out the attack.
State television showed images of the immediate aftermath. In it, paramedics could be seen helping someone in military fatigues laying on the ground. Other armed security personnel shouted at each other in front of what appeared to be a viewing stand for the parade.
The semi-official ISNA news agency published photographs of the attack's aftermath, with bloodied troops in dress uniforms helping each other walk away.
The attack struck on Ahvaz's Quds, or Jerusalem, Boulevard.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility.
Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has blamed regional countries and their "United States masters" for the attack.
Zarif on Twitter warned that "Iran will respond swiftly and decisively in defence of Iranian lives" after the attack in Ahvaz.
He said that children and journalists were casualties in the attack.
He added that the gunmen were "terrorists recruited, trained, armed and paid by a foreign regime".
He did not immediately elaborate. However, Arab separatist groups in the region have launched attacks on oil pipelines there.
Saturday's attack comes after a coordinated June 7, 2017, Islamic State group assault on parliament and the shrine of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in Tehran.
That attack had at that point been the only one by the Sunni extremists inside of Shiite Iran, which has been deeply involved in the wars in Iraq and Syria where the militants once held vast territory.
At least 18 people were killed and more than 50 wounded in the 2017 attack that saw gunmen carrying Kalashnikov assault rifles and explosives storm the parliament complex where a legislative session had been in progress, starting an hours-long siege.
Meanwhile, gunmen and suicide bombers also struck outside Khomeini's mausoleum on Tehran's southern outskirts. Khomeini led the 1979 Islamic Revolution that toppled the Western-backed shah to become Iran's first supreme leader until his death in 1989.
Ahvaz is the capital of Iran's oil-rich Khuzestan province. The province in the past has seen Arab separatists attack oil pipelines.
The assault shocked Tehran, which largely has avoided militant attacks in the decades after the tumult surrounding the Islamic Revolution.
The IRNA report said those wounded in the attack on Saturday included a woman and a child.
Earlier reports described the assailants as "Takfiri gunmen", a term previously used to describe the Islamic State group.
The semi-official Fars news agency, which is close to the elite Revolutionary Guard, said two gunmen on a motorcycle wearing khaki uniforms carried out the attack.
State television showed images of the immediate aftermath. In it, paramedics could be seen helping someone in military fatigues laying on the ground. Other armed security personnel shouted at each other in front of what appeared to be a viewing stand for the parade.
The semi-official ISNA news agency published photographs of the attack's aftermath, with bloodied troops in dress uniforms helping each other walk away.
The attack struck on Ahvaz's Quds, or Jerusalem, Boulevard.
There was no immediate claim of responsibility.
Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif has blamed regional countries and their "United States masters" for the attack.
Zarif on Twitter warned that "Iran will respond swiftly and decisively in defence of Iranian lives" after the attack in Ahvaz.
He said that children and journalists were casualties in the attack.
He added that the gunmen were "terrorists recruited, trained, armed and paid by a foreign regime".
He did not immediately elaborate. However, Arab separatist groups in the region have launched attacks on oil pipelines there.
Saturday's attack comes after a coordinated June 7, 2017, Islamic State group assault on parliament and the shrine of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in Tehran.
That attack had at that point been the only one by the Sunni extremists inside of Shiite Iran, which has been deeply involved in the wars in Iraq and Syria where the militants once held vast territory.
At least 18 people were killed and more than 50 wounded in the 2017 attack that saw gunmen carrying Kalashnikov assault rifles and explosives storm the parliament complex where a legislative session had been in progress, starting an hours-long siege.
Meanwhile, gunmen and suicide bombers also struck outside Khomeini's mausoleum on Tehran's southern outskirts. Khomeini led the 1979 Islamic Revolution that toppled the Western-backed shah to become Iran's first supreme leader until his death in 1989.
Ahvaz is the capital of Iran's oil-rich Khuzestan province. The province in the past has seen Arab separatists attack oil pipelines.
The assault shocked Tehran, which largely has avoided militant attacks in the decades after the tumult surrounding the Islamic Revolution.
Foreign
Minister Mohammed Javad Zarif said the assault was the handiwork of
"regional terror sponsors", language that usually refers to Iran's
enemies Saudi Arabia and Israel, and "their US masters". He vowed Tehran
would respond decisively.
The Revolutionary Guards are the most powerful and heavily armed military force in the Islamic Republic and also have a vast stake worth billions of dollars in the economy.
Kurdish militants killed 10 Revolutionary Guards in an attack on an IRGC post on the Iraqi border in July, Iran's semi-official Tasnim news agency reported, the latest bloodshed in an area where armed
Kurdish opposition groups are active.
The Revolutionary Guards are the most powerful and heavily armed military force in the Islamic Republic and also have a vast stake worth billions of dollars in the economy.
Kurdish militants killed 10 Revolutionary Guards in an attack on an IRGC post on the Iraqi border in July, Iran's semi-official Tasnim news agency reported, the latest bloodshed in an area where armed
Kurdish opposition groups are active.
Iran will be scrambling to determine the motives for the Saturday's high-profile attack as it faces growing U.S. pressure.
President Donald Trump decided in May to pull the United States out of the 2015 international nuclear deal with Tehran and reimpose sanctions in a bid to isolate the Islamic Republic.
President Donald Trump decided in May to pull the United States out of the 2015 international nuclear deal with Tehran and reimpose sanctions in a bid to isolate the Islamic Republic.
A video
on state television's website showed confused soldiers at the scene of
the attack. Standing in front of the stand, one asked: "Where did they
come from?" Another responded: "From behind us."
Four militants carried out the attack and two of them were killed, according to ISNA. There has been no claim of responsibility for the attack in the city of Ahvaz.
Iran was holding similar parades in several cities including the capital Tehran and the port of Bandar Abbas on the Gulf. "Shooting began by several gunmen from behind the stand during the parade. There are several killed and injured," a correspondent told state television.
Tensions between mainly Shi'ite Iran and mostly Sunni Saudi Arabia have surged in recent years, with the two countries supporting opposite sides in wars in Syria and Yemen and rival political parties in Iraq and Lebanon.
Attacks on the military are rare in Iran.
Last year, in the first deadly assault claimed by Islamic State in Tehran, 18 people were killed at the parliament and mausoleum of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder and first supreme leader of the Islamic Republic.Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani vowed a “crushing response” after gunmen shot dead at least 29 people including women and children Saturday in an attack on an Iranian military parade.
Four militants carried out the attack and two of them were killed, according to ISNA. There has been no claim of responsibility for the attack in the city of Ahvaz.
Iran was holding similar parades in several cities including the capital Tehran and the port of Bandar Abbas on the Gulf. "Shooting began by several gunmen from behind the stand during the parade. There are several killed and injured," a correspondent told state television.
Tensions between mainly Shi'ite Iran and mostly Sunni Saudi Arabia have surged in recent years, with the two countries supporting opposite sides in wars in Syria and Yemen and rival political parties in Iraq and Lebanon.
Attacks on the military are rare in Iran.
Last year, in the first deadly assault claimed by Islamic State in Tehran, 18 people were killed at the parliament and mausoleum of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder and first supreme leader of the Islamic Republic.Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani vowed a “crushing response” after gunmen shot dead at least 29 people including women and children Saturday in an attack on an Iranian military parade.
The
Islamic State (IS) jihadist group claimed to have carried out the rare
assault in the southwestern city of Ahvaz, while Iranian officials
accused “a foreign regime” backed by the United States of being behind
it.
“The response of the Islamic
Republic of Iran to the smallest threat will be crushing,” Rouhani said
on his official website, after earlier addressing a similar military
parade in Tehran to mark the start of the 1980-1988 war with Iraq.
“Those who give intelligence and propaganda support to these terrorists must answer for it,” he said.
Foreign
Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif said the attack near the Iraqi border was
carried out by “terrorists recruited, trained, armed and paid by a
foreign regime”.
“Iran holds regional terror sponsors and their US masters accountable for such attacks,” he wrote on his Twitter account.
The
city lies in Khuzestan, a province bordering Iraq that has a large
ethnic Arab community and has seen separatist violence in the past that
Iran has blamed on its regional rivals.
IS
jihadists said via their propaganda mouthpiece Amaq that “Islamic State
fighters attacked a gathering of Iranian forces” in Ahvaz.
State
television gave a casualty toll of 29 dead and 57 wounded, while the
official news agency IRNA said those killed included women and children
among spectators at the rally. Many of the wounded were in critical
condition.
Iranian Armed Forces
spokesman Brig Gen Abolfazl Shekarchi said that the militants who had
committed the attack on the military parade were linked to the United
States and Israel. “These terrorists are not members of the IS and do
not belong to groups fighting the Islamic system. These people are
linked to the United States and [Israeli intelligence service] Mossad.
These militants were organised and trained by two countries of the
Persian Gulf,” Shekarchi told IRNA in an interview.
The spokesman added that the servicemen had killed all four militants who committed the attack.
Foreign
Minister Zarif did not specify which regional government he held
responsible for the shooting, but Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards said
the attackers were funded by Sunni arch-rival Saudi Arabia.
“Those
who opened fire on civilians and the armed forces have links to the
Ahvazi movement,” Guards spokesman Ramezan Sharif told the semi-official
agency ISNA. “They are funded by Saudi Arabia and attempted to cast a
shadow over the Iranian armed forces.”
Armed
forces spokesman Brigadier General Abolfazl Shekarchi said the dead
included a young girl and a former serviceman in a wheelchair.
Three attackers were killed at the scene, he said, and the fourth died later of his injuries, he told state television.
Khuzestan
deputy governor Ali-Hossein Hosseinzadeh told ISNA that “eight to nine”
troops were among those killed, as well as a journalist. In a message
of condolence to Russia’s close regional ally, President Vladimir Putin
said he was “appalled by this bloody crime” which was a reminder of the
“necessity of an uncompromising battle against terrorism”.
Syria,
another ally, also condemned the attacks, standing in “full sympathy
and solidarity with the Islamic Republic of Iran”, said a Syrian foreign
ministry official.
Neighbouring Turkey expressed “great sorrow” at what it called “a heinous terrorist attack”.
Khuzestan
was a major battleground of the 1980s war with Iraq and the province
saw unrest in 2005 and 2011, but has since been largely quiet.
Attacks
by Kurdish rebels on military patrols along the border further north
are relatively common. But attacks on regime targets inside major cities
are far rarer.
On June 7, 2017, 17
people were killed and dozens wounded in simultaneous attacks in Tehran
on the parliament and on the tomb of revolutionary leader Ruhollah
Khomeini - the first inside Iran claimed by IS.
In April, 26 alleged members of the Sunni extremist group went on trial on charges connected with that twin attack.
The
attack in Ahvaz came as Rouhani was among dignitaries at the main
anniversary parade in Tehran. In a keynote speech, he vowed to boost
Iran’s ballistic missile capabilities despite Western concerns that were
cited by his US counterpart Donald Trump in May when he abandoned a
landmark nuclear deal with Tehran.
“We
will never decrease our defensive capabilities... we will increase them
day by day,” Rouhani said at a military parade. “The fact that the
missiles anger you shows they are our most effective weapons,” he said,
referring to the West.
The United
States reimposed crippling sanctions on Iran last month, and a new round
of even harsher sanctions targeting Iran’s vital oil sector is set to
go back into effect on November 5.
Washington
has said it is ready to open talks on a new agreement to replace the
July 2015 accord, but Tehran has said repeatedly it cannot negotiate
under the pressure of the sanctions.
Trump
and Rouhani will both be in New York next week for the United Nations
General Assembly. But Iran has repeatedly ruled out any meeting.