Iranwire – At least 11 Iranian police officers were killed in an overnight attack on a police station in the restive southeastern province of Sistan and Baluchistan, an official told state television.
“In the terrorist attack on the police headquarters in the town of Rask, 11 policemen were killed, and others were wounded,” the deputy provincial governor, Alireza Marhamati, said on December 15.
A number of assailants were also killed in ensuing clashes, the report said, adding that the attack was claimed by the Sunni militant group Jaish al-Adl (Army of Justice).
The impoverished province of Sistan and Baluchistan borders Afghanistan and Pakistan. It is home to a Sunni Baluch minority of up to 2 million people in a country where the population is predominantly Shia.
Human rights groups say the Baluch population and other minorities in Iran face widespread discrimination in the judicial system and their everyday lives, with the authorities curtailing their access to education, employment, adequate housing and political office.
Unrest in Sistan and Baluchistan province has involved drugs-smuggling gangs, Baluch rebels and Sunni extremists.
The provincial capital, Zahedan, was the scene of months-long deadly protests that erupted in September last year.
Sistan and Baluchistan has been the scene of similar attacks in the past, including in July 23 when four police officers were killed while on patrol.
Two weeks earlier, two policemen and four assailants died in a shootout claimed by the Jaish al-Adl group.
And in May, state media reported that five Iranian border guards were killed in clashes with “a terrorist group that was seeking to infiltrate the country.”