Funeral procession held for victims of armed attack on military parade in Ahvaz; security and military officials report identification of attackers
The funeral and burial ceremony for those killed in the armed attack on the military parade in Ahvaz was held with the presence of some government and military officials and a number of citizens in the city.
Iranian domestic news agencies, while reporting the funeral of 24 victims of the incident, reported on Monday, the 2nd of Mehr, citing the Minister of Intelligence of the Islamic Republic about the identification of the perpetrators of this attack. Mahmoud Alavi, who attended the funeral ceremony, stated that all attackers involved in this attack have been killed, saying that a major portion of the members of the attack team have been arrested.
Meanwhile, Brigadier General Nozar Nemati, Deputy Commander of the Army’s Ground Forces, also announced on the sidelines of a joint army morning gathering the identification of “all other perpetrators of this incident.” Further details about these individuals have not been disclosed.
Following the attack by four armed individuals on the military parade ceremony in Ahvaz, which resulted in the deaths of 24 people and injuries to 60 others, both the opposition group to the Islamic Republic called al-Ahwaziyya and the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), took responsibility for the attack.
However, while media close to the Islamic Republic emphasized the role of the separatist group al-Ahwaziyya or “National Resistance of Ahwaz” in the attack on the military parade in Ahvaz, on Sunday a news site affiliated with ISIS released a video claiming it was related to the attackers in Ahvaz.
In the video released by ISIS’s affiliated site al-A’maq, three people in military uniforms are present inside a vehicle, with two of them speaking in Arabic and one speaking in Persian with an accent. In this video, while there is no reference to the Ahvaz attack, one of these individuals reports an attack on Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps forces. By releasing this video, ISIS identifies the attackers as affiliated with itself, but none of them mention ISIS membership in the video.
On the other hand, images of the individuals present in the video bear considerable resemblance to images that Revolutionary Guard media released of the attackers after they were killed. On Saturday, hours after the attack on the parade in Ahvaz, Revolutionary Guard Telegram channels, including Quds Corps, released a photo of two killed individuals and wrote that they were two of the four perpetrators of the attack on Saturday in Ahvaz.
Over the past two days, Islamic Republic media have repeatedly emphasized that the armed individuals are from separatist groups.
Meanwhile, while the identity and affiliation of the attackers had not yet been clarified, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, leader of the Islamic Republic, and Hassan Rouhani, the president, attributed the attackers to the United States and its regional allies.
Nikki Haley, the U.S. representative to the United Nations, in an interview with CNN news network, rejected Hassan Rouhani’s statements and said the leaders of the Islamic Republic should pay more attention to the situation within their own country.
She called Rouhani’s claim rhetoric and said that Rouhani is facing public protests, the country’s money is being spent on military forces, he has been suppressing people for a long time, and should look inward and see where the problem lies.
Source: Voice of America
