Several Top Iranian Commanders Killed in Suicide Bombing in Iran

According to reports by AP, the BBC and FOX News, at least twenty people, including five senior commanders of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard, have been killed in a suicide bombing in southeastern Iran. The regime is blaming the Sunni group Jundallah.

UPDATE: Iran's PressTV and the Huffington Post have reported that there were actually two separate bombings in the attack on IRGC and tribal members. From FOX News, the BBC and the AP via Iran's state-run IRNA news agency comes the news that at least twenty people, including five senior commanders of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRCG), as well as a number of local tribal leaders, have been killed in a suicide bombing in the volatile southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchistan. Dozens more are reported to have been wounded in the attack. As reported by IRNA, among the dead are the deputy commander of the IRGC's ground force, Gen. Noor Ali Shooshtari, and the Guard's chief provincial commander, Rajab Ali Mohammadzadeh. The Iranian government has declared those killed in the attack as martyrs and laid the blame for the bombing squarely on a Sunni militant group called Jundallah, or Soldiers of God (also known as the People's Resistance Movement of Iran, or PRMI), which has been waging a low-level insurgency in the Sistan-Baluchistan province for some time. Jundallah, composed of members of the Sunni Baluch minority in that province, has accused the predominantly Shiite regime of persecution and has been carrying out violent attacks against the regime's forces in southeastern Iran for years. This past May, Jundallah claimed responsibility for a bombing at a Shiite mosque that killed 25 people in Zahedan, the capital of Sistan-Baluchistan province. Thirteen members of Jundallah were arrested, convicted in the attack and hanged in July. The Sunni rebel group has carried out bombings, kidnappings and other attacks against the regime's forces in recent years, including a car bombing in February of last year that killed eleven members of the Revolutionary Guard near Zahedan. Ali Larijani, the speaker of the Majlis, Iran's Parliament, condemned the bombing and said it was aimed at disrupting security in southeastern Iran. The Iranian government is also blaming "foreign elements" and the "global arrogance," catch phrases for the United States and other Western powers, of being linked to the attack.