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Gunmen killed at least 25 people and wounded 60 on Saturday in an attack on a military parade in a troubled Iranian province where the majority of the country's Arab minority live, media reports said.
The Islamic Republic of Iran's news agency reported that the number of people injured at the parade in Ahvaz, southwestern Iran, had increased and many injured were in critical condition.
The dead and wounded were a mixture of members of the powerful body of Islamic Revolutionary Guards and civilian spectators, semi-official news agencies reported. Among them were families reunited to attend the annual military parade.
Reports said four armed men were wearing military uniforms and security forces had killed two and captured the other two.
According to media reports, some officials have accused Arab separatists of these attacks. State television has called the attackers "takfiri", a term often used to describe fighters of the Islamic State. The Islamic State and a separatist group, Al Ahwaz, both claimed responsibility.
Iran's Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif wrote on Twitter that "terrorists recruited, trained, armed and paid by a foreign regime" were responsible. "Iran holds the regional sponsors of terrorism and their American masters responsible," he said.
An Iranian general told the Islamic Republic News Agency that the gunmen had been trained by two countries in the Persian Gulf, but he did not name them. Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies are rivals with Iran for power and influence across the Middle East.
Videos and photographs posted online would have shown the attack and its aftermath – civilians and soldiers falling on the sidewalk, screaming and rushing to the cover like gunshots crackled in the background and later carrying wounded and bleeding survivors, including children.
Additional footage, originally broadcast on the Iranian news channel IRIB, indicated the beginning of the shootings. In the clip, uniformed soldiers marched in tandem and reporters watched the procession as the shots were fired. Those in the parade looked behind them before they began desperately to take cover and take cover in a chaotic race to escape.
Some reports indicated that the gunmen had tried and failed to reach the revision stand set up on a wide boulevard, where military commanders were watching the parade.
Several military parades were held Saturday in the country to mark the anniversary of the beginning of the 1980-1988 war with Iraq. The parades, which take place every year across the country, are similar to those of Memorial Day in America.
Brig. General Abolfazl Shekarchi, a spokesman for the Iranian armed forces, told IRIB that officials believed the attackers had concealed weapons along the parade route several days before the event.
President Hassan Rouhani was attending a parade to mark the same occasion in Tehran when he was informed of the attack. Images from state broadcasters show that Rouhani stands alongside several military officials who watch the parade in the capital before slowly leaving a listening platform to hear the attack.
He pledged to investigate and hold those responsible accountable in a message broadcast by the official news agency of the Islamic Republic. Through the same media, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country's supreme leader, offered his condolences to the families of the dead while accusing the United States of being involved in the attack.
"The crime is a continuation of the conspiracy of the American states in the region, which has set itself the goal of creating insecurity in our beloved country," he said in the statement posted on the website of the organization.
He then urged the Iranian intelligence services to bring to justice the criminal organizations responsible for the attack.
Government officials, including the country's first vice president, Eshaq Jahangiri, accused the Al Ahwaz separatist group of attacking ISIS claims.
"Without a doubt, this kind of criminal act will make the determination of the nation and the government of the Islamic Republic of Iran clearer in the uncontested fight against terrorism," Jahangiri wrote in a statement posted on his website. Official Web. He was later quoted by the Islamic Republic of Iran's news agency as denouncing "criminal terrorists" for their "inhumane actions".
Iran, a predominantly Shiite country led by Shiite clerics, has been the target of numerous attacks by Sunni militants or minority ethnic groups, although not deadly like Saturday.
The government often accuses neighboring states, dominated by Sunnis – and sometimes the United States and Israel – of being behind terrorism on its soil. The civil war in Yemen has become a proxy war between Iran, primarily supporting Shiite forces, and Saudi Arabia and its close ally, the United Arab Emirates, supporting a Sunni-dominated government.
Another group of Sunni activists perpetrated suicide bombings in 2010 in a mosque in Zahedan, in southeastern Iran, killing 27 people and injuring hundreds.
Ahvaz, a city of over one million people and capital of Khuzestan province, has recently been a center of anti-government protest, drought, dust storms, unemployment and air pollution. . The province, bordering Iraq in the west and the Persian Gulf in the south, dominates Iranian oil production, but residents have complained that revenues are not sufficiently invested.
Arab separatist groups have operated sporadically in the region for years and have been attributed previous attacks.
Follow Richard Pérez-Peña on Twitter: @perezpena.
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