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At Least 12 Killed in Pair of Terrorist Attacks in Iran - The New York Times

posted onJune 8, 2017
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Article snippet: Armed assailants, including some disguised as women, stunned Iran on Wednesday with brazen attacks on the Parliament building and the tomb of its revolutionary founder, the worst terrorist strike to hit the Islamic republic in years. At least 12 people were killed and 46 were wounded in the near-simultaneous assaults, which lasted for hours, clearly took Iran’s elite security forces by surprise and shattered the self-proclaimed image of calm in a turbulent region. The six known attackers also were killed, official news media said, and five suspects were reported detained. Their identities were not made clear. “We will avenge the blood of those martyred in today’s terrorism attacks,” said Brig. Gen. Hossein Salami, deputy commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, the country’s powerful paramilitary force. In a statement, the Revolutionary Guards appeared to blame Saudi Arabia and the United States for the assaults even as responsibility for them was asserted by the Islamic State, the Sunni extremist group that has taken credit for terrorist attacks around the world in the past few weeks. If the Islamic State’s claim is true, that would be its first successful attack in Iran, which is predominantly Shiite Muslim and regarded by Sunni militants as a nation of heretics. Iranian-backed forces in Iraq and Syria are helping battle the Islamic State. Eleven people died in the Parliament building assault, and one at the mausoleum of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini,... Link to the full article to read more

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