Iran: Attack on Police Station Killed 19

An attack by armed separatists on a police station in a southeastern city killed 19 people, including four members of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard, Iran's state-run IRNA news agency reported Saturday. The assailants in Friday's attack hid among worshippers near a mosque in the city of Zahedan and attacked the nearby police station, according to the report. IRNA quoted Hossein Modaresi, the provincial governor, as saying 19 people were killed. The outlet said 32 Guard members, including volunteer Basiji forces, were also wounded in the clashes, per the AP.

It was not immediately clear if the attack was related to nationwide antigovernment protests gripping Iran since the death in police custody of a 22-year-old Iranian woman. Sistan and Baluchestan province borders Afghanistan and Pakistan and has seen previous attacks on security forces by ethnic Baluchi separatists, though Saturday's Tasnim report did not identify a separatist group suspected of involvement involved in the attack. State-linked Iranian news outlets reported Friday that the head of the Guard’s intelligence department, Seyyed Ali Mousavi, was shot during the attack and later died. The chief of the Revolutionary Guard, Gen. Hossein Salami said the force will take revenge for the killing of its forces in Zahedan.

Thousands of Iranians have taken to the streets over the past two weeks to protest the death of Mahsa Amini, who had been detained by the morality police in Tehran for allegedly wearing her mandatory Islamic headscarf too loosely. The protesters have vented their anger over the treatment of women and wider repression in the Islamic Republic. The nationwide demonstrations rapidly escalated into calls for the overthrow of the clerical establishment that has ruled Iran since 1979. The protests have drawn supporters from various ethnic groups, including Kurdish opposition movements in the northwest that operate along the border with neighboring Iraq. Amini was an Iranian Kurd, and the protests first erupted in Kurdish areas. Iranian state TV has reported that at least 41 protesters and police have been killed since the demonstrations began Sept. 17.

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