Gunmen kill two IRGC members in Iran’s southeast: State media

Unknown gunmen shot dead two members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in southeastern Iran on Tuesday, state media reported.

The two IRGC members, one of whom was a colonel, were shot dead in public in the city of Zahedan, the provincial capital of Sistan-Baluchestan province, the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported.

Security forces killed at least 66 people, including children, and injured hundreds of others in a crackdown after Friday prayers in Zahedan on September 30, Amnesty International said earlier this month.

Iran’s military has in the past clashed with Sunni militants in Sistan-Baluchestan, which is mostly populated by Sunni ethnic Baluchis, a minority in predominantly Shia Iran.

Molawi Abdulhamid, Iran’s top Sunni cleric and Zahedan’s Friday prayer leader, said last week that officials, including Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, were “responsible before God” for the September 30 killings.

The IRGC issued a statement in response to Abdulhamid, warning: “Mr. Abdulhamid, encouraging and agitating youths against the sacred Islamic Republic of Iran may cost you dearly! This is the last warning!”

Baluchi activists complain of ethnic and religious discrimination and accuse the regime of deliberately neglecting their region, one of Iran’s poorest according to official figures.