In the country’s southeast, gunmen opened fire on a vehicle carrying a general from Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), killing a bodyguard in the process.
According to the IRNA state news agency, Brigadier-General Hossein Almassi, an IRGC commander in Sistan-Baluchistan region, was unharmed in the ambush on Saturday.
According to the allegation, “criminals” opened fire at a checkpoint in Iran’s southeastern province, which is bordered by Pakistan and Afghanistan and has seen conflicts between Baluchi separatists, other armed groups, and Iranian forces.
According to IRNA, security authorities have apprehended the perpetrators of the incident near Zahedan, the province capital.
According to the story, the murdered bodyguard was Mahmoud Absalan, the son of another IRGC commander in the region, General Parviz Absalan.
The impoverished region is also a significant opium and heroin smuggling route, making it a hotbed for fights between criminal groups and narcotics traffickers.
The attack occurred on a night when many people were commemorating the formation of the Revolutionary Guard after the Islamic Revolution of 1979.
The deadly attack occurred two days after Iran reported the arrest of three people it said were related to Israel’s Mossad intelligence organisation in Sistan-Baluchistan.
Three Revolutionary Guard personnel were among nine people killed in a confrontation in the same region with “armed criminals” in January, a month after troops killed a gunman who attacked the IRGC’s rural intelligence office.
In one of the most daring strikes on Iran’s most powerful military institution, a suicide bomber killed 27 Revolutionary Guard troops in Sistan-Baluchistan in 2019.
