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Tehran (Times Of Ocean)- Iranian state media reports a general of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) was unhurt during an ambush on his vehicle in southeastern Iran on April 23. The bodyguard was killed.
Brigadier General Hossein Almassi, the apparent target, is a commander of the FTO-IRGC in Sistan-Baluchistan Province, a particularly poor and predominantly Sunni area bordering Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Almassi’s bodyguard, the son of another IRGC commander, was killed when gunmen opened fire on his convoy, according to reports.
The reports said suspects were apprehended after the attack near a checkpoint in the provincial capital, Zahedan, but they did not provide details.The reports said suspects were apprehended near a checkpoint in Zahedan, the provincial capital, but they did not provide any details.
Almassi was not injured and the dead bodyguard was identified as Mahmud Absalan, the son of a senior IRGC commander in the region, said the state-run media IRNA.
Iran’s security forces and Baluch militants have clashed numerous times in Sistan-Baluchistan, and drug traffickers have exploited the region as a smuggling route for Afghan opium and heroin.
The majority Shi’ite Iranian authorities discriminate against some of the country’s large Sunni population.
In an incident in which three Basij militia volunteers were also killed, the IRGC said it had killed six “armed bandits” in the province on January 1.
In late December, Iranian authorities said three men suspected in an attack that killed two IRGC members had been killed.