Gunmen target Iranian parade
At military event, separatists kill 25 people, hurt 60 more
TEHRAN, Iran — Militants disguised as soldiers opened fire Saturday at an annual Iranian military parade in the country’s southwest, killing at least 25 people and wounding more than 60 in the deadliest terror attack to strike the country in nearly a decade.
Women and children scattered along with once-marching Revolutionary Guard soldiers as heavy gunfire rang out at the parade in Ahvaz, the chaos captured live on state television.
The region’s Arab separatists, once known for only nighttime attacks on unguarded oil pipelines, claimed responsibility for the assault. Iran summoned diplomats from Britain, Denmark and the Netherlands early today, accusing them of harboring “members of the terrorist group” that launched the attack.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif blamed regional countries and their “U.S. masters” for funding and arming the separatists, issuing a stark
Ahvaz. Children and journos among casualties,” Zarif said in a Twitter post. “Iran holds regional terror sponsors and their US masters accountable for such attacks.”
“Iran will respond swiftly and decisively in defense of Iranian lives,” Zarif wrote.
The attack came as rows of Revolutionary Guardsmen marched down Ahvaz’s Quds, or Jerusalem, Boulevard. It was one of many events around the country marking the start of Iran’s long 1980s war with Iraq, commemorations known as the “Sacred Defense Week.”
Journalists and paradegoers turned to look toward the first shots, then the rows of marchers broke as soldiers and civilians sought cover from sustained gunfire. Iranian soldiers used their bodies to shield civilians, with one Guardsman in full dress uniform and sash carrying away a bloodied boy.
“Oh, God! Go, go, go! Lie down! Lie down!” one man screamed as a woman fled with her baby.
In the aftermath, paramedics tended to the wounded as soldiers, some bloodied, helped their comrades to ambulances. Video obtained by The Associated Press showed bodies of soldiers, some appearing lifeless, lying on the ground in pools of blood. One had a blanket covering him. A man screamed in grief.
The state-run Islamic Republic News Agency reported the number of people dead or wounded, adding that, with many of the wounded in critical condition, the death toll was expected to rise. It said gunmen wore military uniforms and targeted a riser where military and police commanders were sitting.
At least eight of the dead served in the Revolutionary Guard, an elite paramilitary unit that answers only to Iran’s supreme leader, according to the semiofficial Tasnim news agency.
“We suddenly realized that some armed people wearing fake military outfits started attacking the comrades from behind [the stage] and then opened fire on women and children,” an unnamed wounded soldier told state TV. “They were just aimlessly shooting around and did not have a specific target.”
State TV reported hours later that all four gunmen had been killed, with three dying during the attack and one later succumbing to his wounds at a hospital.
President Hassan Rouhani ordered Iran’s Intelligence Ministry to immediately investigate the attack.
“The president stressed that the response of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the slightest threat would be harsh, but those who support the terrorists should be accountable,” the Islamic Republic News Agency reported.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei described the attack as exposing “the atrocity and viciousness of the enemies of the Iranian nation.”
“Their crime is a continuation of the conspiracies by the U.S.-backed regimes in the region which have aimed at creating insecurity in our dear country,” Khamenei said in a statement. “However, to their dismay, the Iranian nation will persist on the noble and prideful path they have taken and will — like before — overcome all animosities.”
In Washington, National Security Council spokesman Garrett Marquis said: “The United States stands with the Iranian people and encourages the regime in Tehran to focus on keeping them safe at home.”
REGIONAL UNREST
Initially, authorities described the assailants as “takfiri gunmen,” a reference to Muslims viewed as traitors to their own faith and a term previously used to describe the Islamic State militant group. Iran has been deeply involved in the fight against the Islamic State in Iraq.
But later, state media and government officials seemed to come to the consensus that Arab separatists in the region were responsible. Ahvaz is the hub of the small Arab minority in Iran, which is mainly ethnic Persian.
Ahvaz, a city of more than 1 million people and the capital of Khuzestan province, has been a center of anti-government protest recently, as the area is plagued by drought, dust storms, unemployment and air pollution. The province, which borders Iraq to the west and the Persian Gulf to the south, dominates Iranian oil production, but residents have complained that not enough of the revenue is invested there.
Members of the Ahvaz Arab minority have long accused the government in Tehran of neglect, though an Ahvazi Arab, Gen. Ali Shamkhani, serves as the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council.
Iran, a Shiite-majority nation, has blamed its Mideast archrival, the Sunni kingdom of Saudi Arabia, for funding Arab separatists’ activity.
An Iranian general told the Islamic Republic News Agency that the gunmen had been trained by two Persian Gulf countries, but he did not name them. Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies are rivals with Iran for power and influence across the Middle East.
State media in Saudi Arabia did not immediately acknowledge the attack, though a Saudi-linked, Farsi-language satellite channel based in the United Kingdom immediately carried an interview with an Ahvazi activist claiming Saturday’s attack.
In a post on Twitter, Hamid Baeidinejad, Iran’s ambassador to the U.K., called the channel’s decision a “heinous act” and said his country would file a complaint with British authorities over the broadcast.
Yacoub Hor al-Tostari, a spokesman for the Arab Struggle Movement to Liberate Ahvaz, later told the AP that members of an umbrella group of Ahvazi activists his organization leads carried out the attack. The separatist faction seeks an Arab-led state in southwest Iran.
The attack undermined the Iranian government “on the day it wants to give a message to the world that it is powerful and in control,” al-Tostari said. To bolster his claim, he gave details about one of the attackers that the AP could not immediately verify.
The Islamic State also claimed responsibility for the attack in a message on its Amaaq news agency, but it provided no evidence it carried out the assault. Initially, it wrongly said the Ahvaz attack targeted Rouhani, who was in Tehran. The militants have made a string of false claims after major defeats in Iraq and Syria.
Government officials, including the country’s first vice president, Eshaq Jahangiri, have accused the Ahvaz separatist group in the attack and discounted claims from the Islamic State.
“Undoubtedly, these kind of criminal acts will make the resolve of the nation and the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran clearer in the uncontested struggle with terrorism,” Jahangiri wrote in a statement posted on his official website. He was later quoted by the Islamic Republic News Agency denouncing the “criminal terrorists” for their “inhuman actions.”
In Tehran, Rouhani watched a military parade that included ballistic missiles capable of reaching Israel and U.S. military bases in the Mideast. Rouhani said the U.S. withdrawal from the nuclear deal was an attempt to get Iran to give up its military arsenal. United Nations inspectors say Iran is still complying with the deal, under which it limited its nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions.
“Iran neither put its defensive arms aside nor lessens its defensive capabilities,” Rouhani said. “Iran will add to its defensive power day by day.”
Information for this article was contributed by Nasser Karimi, Jon Gambrell, Sarah El Deeb, Maamoun Youssef and Mohammad Nasiri of The Associated Press; by Erin Cunningham, Bijan Sabbagh, Adam Taylor and Brian Murphy of The Washington Post; and by Richard Perez-Pena of The New York Times.