2018 Chabahar suicide bombing | |
---|---|
Location | Chabahar, Sistan-Baluchestan, Iran |
Date | 7 December 2018 (UTC+3½) |
Target | Police headquarters [1] |
Attack type | Suicide bombing |
Deaths | 2 (+1 attacker) [2] |
Injured | 48 |
Perpetrators | Ansar Al-Furqan |
A suicide car bombing occurred on 6 December 2018 near a police station in Chabahar city, Sistan and Baluchestan Province. [1] The attack left at least two policemen killed and 48 others injured, [3] [4] among them women and children. [5]
Iranian media has accused the Ansar Al-Furqan group [6] a Sunni jihadi group, of being behind the incident. Ansar Al-Furqan took responsibility for the attack. [3] Suicide bombings are rare in Iran. [3] [7]
A suicide bomber drove a pickup truck loaded with explosives towards a Law Enforcement Police's station in Chabahar city. Police officers blocked the vehicle and started shooting at the driver, who then blew the car up near the station. [3] According to France 24, as soon as the car bomb was detonated, gunmen tried assaulting the Police Headquarters, but they were killed by Iranian security forces. [8]
At least two policemen killed and 48 others injured as a result of the bombing. [3] [4] The injured people, among them women and children, [5] consisted of 10 military personnel and 32 civilian, 28 of whom were immediately discharged from the hospital after outpatient treatment and 8 others underwent surgery. [9]
According to the police chief Hossein Ashtari, 10 people, suspected of having links to the bombing incident are detained and more cases are identified and being prosecuted. [10]
Javad Zarif, Iran's Foreign Minister, accused a foreign power of involvement and did not name a specific country. "Foreign-backed terrorists kill and wound innocents in Chabahar. As we've made clear in the past, such crimes won’t go unpunished," Zarif said on Twitter. [7] Indian Foreign Minister described the attack as "despicable terrorist attack" and asked for bringing the perpetrators to the justice. [7] Pakistani Foreign Office Spokesman Mohammad Faisal condemned the attack in a Twitter message. [11]
According to the Tasnim News Agency, the aim of the attack was to destabilize the area prior to the meeting of the committee pursuing the Chabahar Agreement. [9] [12]
Jundallah, also known as the People's Resistance Movement of Iran (PRMI), was a Sunni Salafi militant organization based in Sistan and Baluchestan, a province in southeast Iran. The group shared its name with another Baloch group active in Pakistani Balochistan as part of the same insurgency, that claims to be fighting for the "equal rights of Sunni Muslims in Iran".
Numerous civilians, including men, women, children, government officials, activists, secular intellectuals and clerics have been victims of assassination, terrorism, or violence against non-combatants, over the course of modern Iranian history. Among the most notable acts of terrorism in Iran in the 20th century have been the 1978 Cinema Rex fire and the 1990s chain murders of Iran.
The 2007 Baghlan sugar factory bombing occurred on November 6, 2007, when a bomb exploded in the centre of Baghlan, Afghanistan, while a delegation of parliamentarians was visiting, killing at least 72 people including several lawmakers.
This list is limited to bombings and does not include other forms of attacks.
Jaish ul-Adl, or Jaish al-Adl, is a Baloch Sunni Salafi Jihadist separatist organization that operates mainly in the Sistan and Baluchestan province in Iran, where there is a substantial Baloch population and a porous border with Pakistan.
On December 31, 2014, a suicide bomber blew himself up at the cultural center in Ibb, Yemen, killing as many as 49 people and injuring up to 70 others. This was the deadliest attack in the country during 2014, as well as the second major bombing in less than a month, after the 2014 Rada' bombings.
The Sistan and Baluchestan insurgency is an ongoing low-intensity asymmetric conflict in Sistan and Baluchestan Province between Iran and several Baloch Sunni militant organizations designated as terrorist organizations by the Iranian government. It began in 2004 and is part of the wider Balochistan conflict.
Ansar Al-Furqan is a Sunni Baloch militant organization active in Sistan and Baluchestan insurgency and a designated terrorist organization by Iran. The group was established in December 2013 by a merger of Harakat al-Ansar and Hizbul-Furqan.
In July 2013, at the same time as mass protests began against the 3 July coup d'état which deposed Mohamed Morsi, and in parallel with the escalation of the already ongoing jihadist insurgency in the Sinai Peninsula, pro-Muslim Brotherhood militants started violent attacks against policemen and soldiers in central and western Egypt. In the following months, new Islamist armed groups were created to reinstate Islamist rule in Egypt, like Soldiers of Egypt and the Popular Resistance Movement. Since 2013, violence in mainland Egypt has escalated and developed into a low-level Islamist insurgency against the Egyptian government.
A suicide bombing occurred in Iraq on 24 November 2016 when a truck bomb exploded at a petrol station in Hillah, some 100 kilometers from southern Baghdad, killing at least 125 people and injuring many others.
The 2017 Tehran attacks were a series of two simultaneous terrorist attacks that occurred on 7 June 2017 that were carried out by five terrorists belonging to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) against the Iranian Parliament building and the Mausoleum of Ruhollah Khomeini, both in Tehran, Iran, leaving 17 civilians dead and 43 wounded. The shootings were the first terrorist attacks in Tehran in more than a decade, and the first major terror attack in the country since the 2010 Zahedan bombings.
Two bombings on 5 September 2018 at the Maiwand Wrestling Club in Qala-e-Nazer in Dasht-e-Barchi, a predominantly Hazara neighborhood of western Kabul, left at least 20 people dead and 70 others wounded, the deadliest attack on Kabul's Shia since the 15 August suicide bombing. The responsibility for the attacks was claimed by ISIL.
On 22 September 2018, a military parade was attacked by armed gunmen in the southwestern Iranian city of Ahvaz. The shooters killed 25 people, including soldiers of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and civilian bystanders. It was the deadliest terrorist attack in Iran since the Chabahar suicide bombing in December 2010.
On February 13, 2019, a suicide bombing on the Khash–Zahedan road in Sistan and Baluchestan Province of Iran killed at least 27 Revolutionary Guards and wounded another 13. It was one of the deadliest terrorist attacks in Iran in years. The Salafi jihadist militant organization Jaish ul-Adl said it carried out the bombing.
On 11 January 2023, an Islamic State suicide bomber killed at least 20 people in Kabul, Afghanistan.