Iran says it killed 30 militants behind bomb attack

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards said on Sunday they had killed about 30 people who were the “main elements” behind a bomb attack in northwest Iran.

Senior Guards commander Abdolrasoul Mahmoudabadi told state television that the Guards were chasing one or two other members of the group behind the blast, which killed 12 people and injured 80 in the city of Mahabad on Wednesday.

“They were ambushed near the Iran-Iraq border … some 30 main members of the terrorist group were killed in clashes,” he said.

“There are still one or two members of the group members who managed to flee but they will be arrested soon.”

Analysts say incidents like the blast could further pressure President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s government, which is facing deepening political in-fighting and economic pain because of foreign sanctions imposed over Iran’s disputed nuclear program.

Iranian authorities blame the blast, which took place during an annual military parade, on “anti-revolutionary” militants backed by Iran’s enemies, the United States and Israel.

“Investigations showed that intelligence services of America and the Zionist regime (Israel) as well as members of the Iraqi Baath party were behind the blast,” Mahmoudabadi said. “Bandits backed by Mossad and the CIA … carried out the blast.”

No group has so far claimed responsibility for the blast, which occurred during an annual ceremony for the Iranian armed forces to commemorate an eight-year war with Iraq in the 1980s.

Iranian media have often reported clashes between the Revolutionary Guards and Kurdish guerrillas said to be members of Party of Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK), an offshoot of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), which took up arms in 1984 for an ethnic homeland in southeast Turkey and northwest Iran.

Several armed groups hostile to the establishment are active in Iran, including Kurdish separatists in the northwest, Baluch militants in the southeast and some Arabs in the southwest.

The Sunni Muslim Jundollah militant group, which Iran says has links to al Qaeda, is the most active. It claimed a double suicide attack on July 15 that killed 28 people, including Revolutionary Guards, in revenge for the execution of its leader.

The semi-official Fars news agency quoted Mahmoudabadi as saying that the operation against the group responsible for the Mahabad bombing had taken place on Sunday.

But it also earlier quoted Mohammad Pakpour, head of the corps’ ground forces, as saying the Guards had killed many of the perpetrators on Saturday.

Intelligence Minister Heidar Moslehi said on Thursday that the group behind the blast had been arrested.

(Additional reporting by Hossein Jaseb, Writing by Parisa Hafezi; Editing by Kevin Liffey) REUTERS Reut15:59 09-26-10