Suicide blast in Chabahar leaves two dead and 28 injured
A car bomb exploded in front of the Chabahar police headquarters in Sistan and Baluchestan province, killing two people and wounding at least 28 others.
According to media reports, at 9:55 on Thursday, December 6, a vehicle carrying explosives attempted to enter the Chabahar Police Headquarters, but after a clash with police officers, the occupants of the vehicle detonated it in front of the headquarters' entrance.
Mohammad Pakpour, commander of the IRGC's ground forces, who was present at the scene, said that the explosion had no "benefit" for the "terrorists" and that only a few guards were killed in the attack.
He added that no group has yet claimed responsibility for the incident.
The commander of the IRGC Ground Forces told ISNA that the organization's forces have a "presence" in the city of Chabahar.
Some media outlets, mostly close to the fundamentalists, have written that the Ansar al-Furqan group has claimed responsibility for the incident, but neither this group nor official sources have confirmed such news.
Last summer, Iranian media reported, citing the IRGC's Quds Force Headquarters, that Jalil Qanbarzahi, the leader of this group, had been killed in an operation.
Mohammad Reza Naseh, head of the Emergency Medical Center at the Iranshahr Faculty of Medical Sciences and Health Services, reported that 28 people were injured in the attack, three of whom are in critical condition. It is said that at least four of the injured are law enforcement officers.
The victims of this incident have been identified as Second Lieutenant Dariush Ranjbar and Private Nasser Darzadeh.
At the same time, the Iranian police wrote in a statement that the investigation into this issue would continue "until the main factors behind the planning of this terrorist incident are identified and arrested and the main perpetrators are dealt with decisively."
In the early hours after the explosion, some law enforcement officials reported the death of the Chabahar police commander, but this news was denied a few hours later. The number of people killed in the attack was initially reported as 3, then 4, and finally 2.
This is the second such attack in Iran in recent months.
Chabahar is a port in southern Iran that was previously exempted from recent US sanctions on the Islamic Republic. US State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said at the time that the purpose of the move was to “help support Afghanistan’s economic development.”
Chabahar Port, located on the northern coast of the Sea of Oman and along the Strait of Hormuz, is set to become a new high-water transit route to Central Asia under a trilateral agreement between India, Afghanistan, and Iran.
Voice of America
