At least 25 killed as gunmen attack military parade

Gunmen killed at least 25 people and wounded 60 others Saturday in an attack on a military parade in Iran, state media reported, in a restive province that is home to most of the country’s Arab minority.

The Islamic Republic News Agency reported the casualty figures at the parade in Ahvaz, in southwestern Iran, and said that, with many of the wounded in critical condition, the death toll was expected to rise.

The dead and injured were a mix of Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps soldiers and civilian onlookers, multiple semiofficial news agencies reported. They said there were four gunmen, wearing military uniforms, and that security forces had killed two and captured the other two.

The reports quoted some officials as blaming the assault on Arab separatists. State television described the attackers as “takfiri,” a term often used to describe Islamic State fighters. Both the Islamic State and a separatist group, Al Ahwaz, made statements taking responsibility for the shooting.

The Iranian foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, wrote on Twitter that “terrorists recruited, trained, armed & paid by a foreign regime” were responsible, and that “Iran holds regional terror sponsors and their US masters accountable.”

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.

Videos and photographs posted online reportedly showed the attack and its aftermath — civilians and soldiers dropping to the pavement, shouting and running for cover as gunfire crackled in the background, and later carrying away wounded and bleeding survivors, including children.

Some reports said the gunmen had tried and failed to reach the reviewing stand set up on a wide boulevard, where military commanders were watching the parade pass by.

Iran, a majority Shiite Muslim country run by Shiite clerics, has endured numerous attacks by Sunni Muslim militant or ethnic minority groups, though few as deadly as the one Saturday.

The government often accuses neighboring Sunnidominated states — and sometimes the United States and Israel — of being behind terrorism on its soil. The civil war in Yemen has become a proxy war between Iran, supporting primarily Shiite forces, and Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, backing a Sunni-dominated government.

Richard Pérez-Peña is a New York Times writer.

Mehdi Pedramkhoo / Mehr News Agency An Iranian army member carries a child away from a shooting scene during a military parade marking the 38th anniversary of Iraq’s 1980 invasion of Iran in the southwestern city of Ahvaz.