‘Elite’ generals among nearly 50 killed in Iran suicide attack

[Naveed Yaseen]

* Bomber targets meeting of Revolutionary Guards’ commanders, tribal chiefs
* US condemns attack, denies involvement g Zardari, Gilani censure bombing

TEHRAN: A suicide bomber killed seven commanders of Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards and up to 42 other people on Sunday in an attack that President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad charged had been plotted from neighbouring Pakistan.

The Foreign Ministry called in Pakistan’s charge d’affaires over the bombing, which targeted one of the Islamic republic’s most prestigious institutions.

Several tribal leaders in the majority ethnic Baloch Sistan-Balochistan province also died in the bombing, which left several others wounded.

The attacker set off his explosives belt as a meeting of Guards commanders and tribal chiefs got underway at around 8am at a gymnasium in the city of Pasheen, near the border with Pakistan, said the state broadcaster.

“The number of martyrs ... could still rise,” reported the Mehr news agency. Provincial chief coroner Abbas Amian told the official IRNA news agency that his office had received 42 bodies.

The chief prosecutor in Sistan-Baluchestan, Mohammad Marziah, said that Abdolmalek Rigi, the head of the shadowy rebel group Jundallah, had “accepted the responsibility” for the attack.

Among the dead were the deputy commander of the Guards’ ground forces, the Guards’ commander in Sistan-Balochistan, the Guards’ commander for the town of Iranshahr and the commander of the Amir Al-Momenin unit. Three other commanders from the adjacent province of Kerman were also killed.

Parliament speaker Ali Larijani said the United States was implicated.

The United States denied any involvement.

“We condemn this act of terrorism and mourn the loss of innocent lives,” said a State Department Spokesman.

“Reports of alleged US involvement are completely false,” he added.

Meanwhile, President Asif Ali Zardari and Prime Minister Yusuf Raza Gilani strongly condemned the attack in Iran. agencies

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp...2009_pg1_4