Rebels hold 48 as Iran blames US

TEHRAN: Iran says its is holding the US responsible for the lives of 48 of its citizens taken hostage in Syria, following an unconfirmed report by a Syrian rebel group that three hostages had been killed by shelling.

The foreign ministry insisted the 48 were pilgrims, not Revolutionary Guards as the rebels claimed.

Iran said in a letter: ‘‘Because of the United States’ manifest support of terrorist groups and the dispatch of weapons to Syria, the United States is responsible for the lives of the 48 Iranian pilgrims abducted in Damascus.’’

Deputy Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian said Iran had appealed for help from Turkey and Qatar, two governments it accuses of arming the Syrian rebels.

Iran’s message was issued after a Syrian rebel group, Al-Baraa Brigade of the Free Syrian Army, claimed on its Facebook page that ‘‘three of the Iranian prisoners were killed in fierce shelling’’ by the army in Damascus.

The page said the group’s leader, Abdel Nasser Shmeir, was threatening to ‘‘execute the prisoners who are proven members of the Revol- utionary Guard tinues’’.

Iran’s foreign ministry issued a statement in Arabic, cited by Iranian broadcaster Al-Alam, saying it ‘‘rejects as invalid the assertions by the so-called Free Syrian Army that the three Iranian pilgrims were killed during a bombardment by the Syrian military’’.

The Iranians were taken hostage on Saturday as they travelled in a bus in Damascus.

The rebel group posted a video online on Sunday alleging that the Iranians were elite Revolutionary Guards on a ‘‘reconnaissance mission’’.

But Tehran insists they are some of the hundreds of thousands of Iranian Shi’ite pilgrims who visit the revered Sayyida Zeinab shrine in the southeastern suburbs of Damascus each year.

Tehran is the staunchest ally Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

Many of the rebels come from Syria’s Sunni majority, which is hostile to the support Shi’ite Iran has shown to the regime of Assad, whose family is from the minority Alawite sect, a Shi’ite offshoot.

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