Rebels Kill 21 in Southeastern Iran

[maddezmom]

TEHRAN, Iran - Rebels posing as security forces have killed 21 people on a highway in southeastern Iran, Iran's national police chief said Friday.

Gen. Esmaeil Ahmadi Moghaddam accused U.S. and British intelligence services of encouraging Iranian rebels to attack people, the official Iranian news agency reported.

Rebels posing as policemen and soldiers stopped people and killed them on a road in Sistan-Baluchestan province, which borders Pakistan and Afghanistan, the agency quoted Moghaddam as saying.

"Twenty one people have been martyred and seven injured," Moghaddam said

There are no well-known opposition groups operating in southeastern Iran, but the region is known for gangs of drug traffickers who have frequently clashed with security forces and occasionally kidnapped people

more:http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20060317/ap_on_re_as/iran_rebels;_

[Taxloss]

1. BBC reports Iranians blaming US and British intelligence

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/middle_east/4816442.stm

snip:

Gen Ahmadi-Moqaddam said he had information indicating that US and UK intelligence services had held meetings with the gunmen.

"The said intelligence services had instructed the local bandits on ways of undermining security in the region," he said.

"It seems that they are pursuing the same policy that they did in the Iraqi town of Samarra, that is, to provoke fighting between Shias and Sunnis."

The US and UK have troops stationed in southern Afghanistan as part of a Nato peacekeeping force.

[no_hypocrisy]

2. Interesting tactic: create a civil war each in Iraq AND Iran.

Forment as much as chaos per square inch as humanly possible.

[bemildred]

3. "There are no well-known opposition groups operating in southeastern Iran"

Hmmmmm ...

[Igel]

4. They're Baluchis in that part of Iran; not

Persians. And across the border in Pakistan, there's a bit of a low-level insurgency between some Baluchi tribes and the central governmental. Insufficient sharing of resources, development, respect, yada-yada.

But apparently they're also majority Sunni, in a majority-Shi'ite Iran. (Like the Kurds, at the other end of the country.) That can't be good for them.

Then there are, to use the word the Pakistani uses, dacoits. Quasi-mafia thugs.