12 reportedly killed in explosion at Iran base
An explosion at a munitions depot at a Revolutionary Guard base in southwestern Iran on Tuesday killed at least 12 people, an Iranian news report said.
The news website mashreghnews.ir, which is close to the Iranian government, reported that at least 20 people were injured in the explosion.
The report cited no sources, and Iranian officials did not disclose the ranks of those killed or the exact casualty figures, which they said would be released Wednesday.
Iranian officials told official and semiofficial news organizations that the explosion was an accident caused by a fire at the Imam Ali training base outside the town of Khorramabad that reached a weapons storage facility.
The explosion comes after an attack on a military parade last month in the northwestern Kurdish city of Mahabad that left 12 people dead and an attack on police several days ago in another mostly Kurdish town that killed five people.
Iran’s ethnic Kurds, who account for about 10% of the nation’s population and are concentrated in its western provinces, have longstanding grievances against Iran’s central government that have frequently resulted in violence or waves of guerrilla warfare in recent decades.
daragahi@latimes.com
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