Iran makes arrests
DUBAI, Dec 9, (RTRS): Iranian security forces have detained 10 people suspected of links to a suicide car bomb attack this week that killed at least two policemen, police chief Hossein Ashtari said on Sunday.
“Good clues have been obtained and hopefully with the public’s cooperation ... we will get to the main leads,” Ashtari was quoted by the state news agency IRNA as saying.
More suspects have been identified and are being sought, Ashtari added.
At least 48 people were also injured in Thursday’s suicide car bomb attack
by a Sunni militant group on a police headquarters in the port city of Chabahar in southeast Iran, according to state media.
While suicide bombings are rare in Iran, Sunni militant groups have carried out several attacks on security forces in recent years in Sistan-Baluchestan province, where Chabahar is located.
The province is home to a Sunni minority in the largely Shi’ite country, and it has also long been plagued by violence from both drug smugglers and separatists. The US-based SITE Intelligence Group and Iranian state media reported that Sunni Baluch militant group Ansar al-Furqan had claimed responsibility for the attack.
Tehran accuses its Sunni-led regional rival Saudi Arabia and its archenemy, the United States, of funding Sunni militants, a charge Riyadh and Washington deny.
Iran has threatened to hit militant bases in neighbouring Pakistan unless Islamabad took action to secure its border area, which Tehran says has become a safe haven for anti-Iran groups to operate.
Meanwhile, fast-track courts set up in Iran to fight economic crime have jailed 30 men for up to 20 years each, the judiciary said on Sunday, as the country faces renewed US sanctions and a public outcry against profiteering and corruption.
The new Islamic revolutionary courts – whose rulings cannot be appealed, except for death sentences – were set up in August after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called for “swift and just” legal action to confront an “economic war” by foreign enemies.