Free Republic

Late last week, two suicide bombings in southeastern Iran reduced a mosque to rubble, leaving 27 dead and nearly 300 injured. The explosions were the work of Jundollah—”Soldiers of Allah”—a rebel Sunni group opposed to the Shiite-controlled regime in Tehran. The Islamic Republic has always accused the United States of being Jundollah’s paymaster. The leader of Tehran’s government-controlled Friday Prayer even charged the U.S. with masterminding the attacks: “Since the U.S. has lost face in the case of Shahram Amiri [the Iranian nuclear scientist who allegedly spied for the U.S. against Iran] and the reputation of its intelligence has also...

IRAN hanged some members of a Sunni rebel group in a volatile southeastern area today, but they were put to death in prison and not in public as initially planned, the semi-official Fars News Agency said. Fars had reported yesterday that 14 members of Jundollah (God's soldiers) would be executed in a park in the city of Zahedan, including the brother of its leader Abdolmalek Rigi. But Ebrahim Hamidi, who heads the judiciary in Sistan-Baluchestan province, said today the executions took place in a jail instead and that Rigi's brother would be put to death later in the week. He...

Unlike Pakistan’s southwestern province of Balochistan, which has been receiving extensive media coverage as a result of its uprising against the central government in recent years, Iran’s vast but sparsely populated southeastern province of Sistan-Balochistan has long been out of media glare. This, however, seems to be changing now with an escalating insurgency led by an obscure Baloch militant organization called Jundollah (Soldiers of God). Given the absence of accurate demographic data on Iran’s ethnic and religious minorities, it is hard to know the precise number of Iranian Balochis. According to an estimate, there are some 10-15 million Balochis residing...

Revolutionary Guards killed in bomb blast By Matthew Moore and agencies 14/02/2007 At least 11 people have been killed in an unprecedented bomb attack on a bus carrying Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards. The blast happened in the southeast of the country, near the border with Pakistan and Afghanistan, where government troops often clash with drug smuggling gangs. A bomb hidden in a car was detonated as the bus taking soldiers from their housing compound in the city of Zahedan to a military base drew near. According to some reports armed motorcyclists shot at the bus to force it to stop,...

Tehran, 2 Feb. (AKI) - Jondallah, the main armed separatist group of Iranian Baluchistan, has claimed responsibility Friday for an attack the previous night in Zahedan, the capital of Iranian Baluchistan, which killed four security officials . "The commando of martyr Ahmad Dehmordeh wanted to remind the regime of the Islamic Republic, which is now celebration its birth (the 28th anniversary of the 1979 revolution) that it is not supported by the people of Baluchistan and it must not feel safe there," the group said in a statement delivered to Adnkronos International (AKI). Celebrations for the 28th anniversary of the...

DUBAI, Dec 31 (Reuters) - A little-known Sunni rebel organisation says it has abducted nine Iranian soldiers to pressure Tehran to free imprisoned members of the group, Al Arabiya television said on Sunday. A caller speaking for the Jundollah (God's Soldiers) said the soldiers were seized near Iran's border with Pakistan, and demanded the release of 16 group members, the satellite television channel said. Iranian officials were not immediately available to comment. In July, the group said it beheaded an Iranian security agent it had abducted the previous month. Iran's remote southeastern areas on the border with Pakistan have seen...