The region’s Arab separatists, once only known for nighttime attacks on unguarded oil pipelines, claimed responsibility for the brazen assault.<\/b>
\nMilitants disguised as soldiers opened fire Saturday on an annual Iranian military parade in the country\u2019s oil-rich southwest, killing at least 25 people and wounding over 60 in the deadliest terror attack to strike the country in nearly a decade.
Women and children scattered along with once-marching Revolutionary Guard soldiers as heavy gunfire rang out at the parade in Ahvaz, the chaos captured live on state television.
The region\u2019s Arab separatists, once only known for nighttime attacks on unguarded oil pipelines, claimed responsibility for the brazen assault.
Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif blamed regional countries and their \u201cU. S. masters\u201d for funding and arming the separatists, issuing a stark warning as regional tensions remain high in the wake of the U. S. withdraw from the Iranian nuclear deal.
\u201cIran will respond swiftly and decisively in defense of Iranian lives,\u201d Zarif wrote on Twitter.
The attack came as rows of Revolutionary Guardsmen marched down Ahvaz\u2019s Quds, or Jerusalem, Boulevard. It was one of many around the country marking the start of Iran\u2019s long 1980s war with Iraq, commemorations known as the \u201cSacred Defense Week.\u201d
Journalists and onlookers turned to look toward the first shots, then the rows of marchers broke as soldiers and civilians sought cover under sustained gunfire. Iranian soldiers used their bodies at time to shield civilians in the melee, with one Guardsman in full dress uniform and sash carrying away a bloodied boy.
\u201cOh God! Go, go, go! Lie down! Lie down!\u201d one man screamed as a woman fled with her baby.
In the aftermath, paramedics tended to the wounded as soldiers, some bloodied, helped their comrades to ambulances. Video obtained by The Associated Press of the aftermath showed bodies of soldiers, some appearing lifeless, laying on the ground in pools of blood. One had a blanket covering him. A man screamed in grief.
The attack killed at least 25 people and wounded over 60, according to the state-run IRNA news agency. It said gunmen wore military uniforms and targeted a riser where military and police commanders were sitting. At least eight of the dead served in the Revolutionary Guard, an elite paramilitary unit that answers only to Iran\u2019s supreme leader, according to the semi-official Tasnim news agency.
\u201cWe suddenly realized that some armed people wearing fake military outfits started attacking the comrades from behind (the stage) and then opened fire on women and children,\u201d an unnamed wounded soldier told state TV. \u201cThey were just aimlessly shooting around and did not have a specific target.\u201d
State TV hours later reported that all four gunmen had been killed, with three dying during the attack and one later succumbing to his wounds at a hospital.
President Hassan Rouhani ordered Iran\u2019s Intelligence Ministry to immediately investigate the attack.
\u201cThe president stressed that the response of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the slightest threat would be harsh, but those who support the terrorists should be accountable,\u201d IRNA reported.
Meanwhile, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei described the attack as exposing \u201cthe atrocity and viciousness of the enemies of the Iranian nation.\u201d
\u201cTheir crime is a continuation of the conspiracies by the U. S.-backed regimes in the region which have aimed at creating insecurity in our dear country,\u201d Khamenei said in a statement. \u201cHowever, to their dismay, the Iranian nation will persist on the noble and prideful path they have taken and will \u2014 like before \u2014 overcome all animosities.\u201d
Despite the Trump administration\u2019s touchy relations with Iran, the U. S. government strongly deplored the attack, saying that \u201cthe United States condemns all acts of terrorism and the loss of any innocent lives.\u201d
\u201cWe stand with the Iranian people against the scourge of radical Islamic terrorism and express our sympathy to them at this terrible time,\u201d State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said.
Initially, authorities described the assailants as \u201ctakfiri gunmen,\u201d a term previously used to describe the Islamic State group. Iran has been deeply involved in the fight against IS in Iraq and has aided embattled Syrian President Bashar Assad in his country\u2019s long war.
But later, state media and government officials seemed to come to the consensus that Arab separatists in the region were responsible. The separatists accuse Iran\u2019s Persian-dominated government of discriminating against its ethnic Arab minority, though an Ahvazi Arab, Gen. Ali Shamkhani, serves as the secretary of Iran\u2019s Supreme National Security Council.
Khuzestan province also has seen recent protests over Iran\u2019s nationwide drought, as well as economic protests.
Iran has blamed its Mideast archrival, the Sunni kingdom of Saudi Arabia, for funding Arab separatists\u2019 activity. State media in Saudi Arabia did not immediately acknowledge the attack, though a Saudi-linked, Farsi-language satellite channel based in the United Kingdom immediately carried an interview with an Ahvazi activist claiming Saturday\u2019s attack.
Hamid Baeidinejad, Iran\u2019s ambassador to the U. K., called the channel\u2019s decision a \u201cheinous act\u201d in a post on Twitter and said his country would file a complaint with British authorities over the broadcast.
Yacoub Hor al-Tostari, a spokesman for the Arab Struggle Movement to Liberate Ahvaz, later told the AP that members of an umbrella group of Ahvazi activists his organization leads carried out the attack.
The attack undermined the Iranian government \u201con the day it wants to give a message to the world that it is powerful and in control,\u201d al-Tostari said. To bolster his claim, he gave details about one of the attackers that the AP could not immediately verify.
The Islamic State group also claimed responsibility for the attack in a message on its Amaaq news agency, but provided no evidence it carried out the assault. They also initially wrongly said the Ahvaz attack targeted Rouhani, who was in Tehran. The militants have made a string of false claims in the wake of major defeats in Iraq and Syria.
In Tehran, Rouhani watched a military parade that included ballistic missiles capable of reaching Israel and U. S. military bases in the Mideast. Rouhani said the U. S. withdraw from the nuclear deal was an attempt to get Iran to give up its military arsenal. United Nations inspectors say Iran is still complying with the deal, which saw it limit its nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of economic sanctions.
\u201cIran neither put its defensive arms aside nor lessens its defensive capabilities,\u201d Rouhani said. \u201cIran will add to its defensive power day by day.\u201d
Meanwhile, Iranian Gen. Abolfazl Shekarchi, a spokesman for the armed forces, alleged without evidence that the four militants involved in Saturday\u2019s attack \u201cwere dependent to the intelligence services of the U. S. and the Mossad\u201d of Israel.
\u201cThey have been trained and organized in two Persian Gulf countries,\u201d he said, without elaborating.
Saturday\u2019s attack comes after a coordinated June 7,2017 Islamic State group assault on parliament and the shrine of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of Iran\u2019s 1979 Islamic Revolution. At least 18 people were killed and more than 50 wounded.
That assault shocked Tehran, which largely has avoided militant attacks in the decades after the tumult surrounding the revolution.
In the last decade, mass-casualty militant attacks have been incredibly rare. In 2009, more than 40 people, including six Guard commanders, were killed in a suicide attack by Sunni extremists in Iran\u2019s Sistan and Baluchistan province.<\/p>\n

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