6 Revolutionary Guard commanders killed in Iran bombing

A suicide bomber killed dozens of people Sunday, including six senior commanders of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard, in southeastern Iran, the country's official news agency reported.

The IRNA news agency said the dead included the deputy commander of the Guard's ground force, Gen. Noor Ali Shooshtari, as well as the Guard's chief provincial commander, Rajab Ali Mohammadzadeh. Dozens of others were wounded, the report said.

The commanders were inside a car on their way to a meeting in the Pishin region near Iran's border with Pakistan when an attacker with explosives blew himself up, IRNA said.

Iran's parliamentary speaker, Ali Larijani, condemned the assassination of the Guard commanders, saying the bombing was aimed at disrupting security in southeastern Iran.

"We express our condolences for their martyrdom. ... The intention of the terrorists was definitely to disrupt security in Sistan-Baluchistan Province," Larijani told an open session of the parliament broadcast live on state radio.

Iranian state television cited informed sources as saying Britain was directly involved in the suicide attack.

The Guards had earlier blamed "foreign elements" linked to the United States for the attack.

'Terrorism is abhorrent'

The attack and the allegations of foreign involvement are likely to raise tension between Iran and the West, a day before nuclear talks in Vienna including Iranian, US, French and Russian officials.

"Some informed sources said the British government was directly involved in the terrorist attack ... by organising, supplying equipment and employing professional terrorists," state television said.

The television report said analysts believed the aim of the attack was to "re-direct" parts of the West's problems in Afghanistan across the border to Iran.

A Foreign Office spokesman in London declined to comment directly on the Iranian comments and instead issued a statement, saying: "The British government condemns the terrorist attack in the province of Sistan and Baluchestan in Iran and the sad loss of life which it caused.

"Terrorism is abhorrent wherever it occurs. Our sympathies go to those who have been killed in the attack and to their families," it said.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility, but suspicion would likely fall on the Sunni militant group Jundallah, or Soldiers of God, which has carried out attacks in southeastern Iran against Shiite targets.

Ideological bulwark

In May, the group took credit for a suicide bombing at a Shiite mosque that killed 25 people in Zahedan, the capital of Iran's Sistan-Baluchistan province, which has witnessed some of Jundallah's worst attacks. Thirteen members of the faction were convicted in the attack and hanged in July.

Jundallah, comprising Sunnis from the Baluchi ethnic minority, have waged a low-level insurgency in recent years, accusing the mostly Shiite government of persecution.

Jundallah has carried out bombings, kidnappings and other attacks against Iranian soldiers and other forces in recent years, including a car bombing in February 2007 that killed 11 members of the Revolutionary Guard near Zahedan.

Jundallah also claimed responsibility for the December 2006 kidnapping of seven Iranian soldiers in the Zahedan area. It threatened to kill them unless members of the group in Iranian prisons were released. The seven were released a month later, apparently after negotiations through tribal mediators.

The Revolutionary Guard was created after the 1979 Islamic Revolution as an ideological bulwark to defend Iran's clerical rule. The 120,000-strong elite force controls Iran's missile program and has its own ground, naval and air units.

Reuters and AP contributed to the report