TEHRAN, 15 May 2006 — Al-Qaeda-linked militants executed 11 men at a roadside in southern Iran and strung a wounded 12-year-old boy from an electricity pylon before fleeing to mountain hideouts, police said yesterday.
Interior Minister Mostafa Pourmohammadi said security forces had killed some of the militants. Local media reported that others had fled into the Kofout Mountains in southeastern Kerman.
“Some of the militants have been arrested and some killed. Those remaining cannot get out of the country as the borders are being strictly controlled,” state television quoted him as saying.
Gunmen disguised as policemen pulled over four cars on the desert road between the cities of Kerman and Bam on Saturday night, state television reported. Eleven executed men were tipped into a ditch.
The gunmen also sprayed a passing car with bullets, killing a 12th man. The fate of the boy strung from the pylon was unclear.
“Terrorist elements named Jundollah (God’s soldiers), headed by Abdolmalek Rigi, claimed responsibility for the attack,” Gen. Eskandar Momeni, a deputy commander of Iran’s police force told Iranian media.
Jundollah are Sunni Muslim militants who beheaded an Iranian security agent last June and killed 22 people near the southeastern city of Zahedan in March.
Iranian officials say Jundollah commander Rigi was a cell leader of Osama Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda network in Iran.
Jundollah hail from the eastern border province of Sistan-Baluchistan, which is plagued by violence associated with the traffic of opium from Afghanistan to Europe.
Sunni regions in Iran say they suffer discrimination in the predominantly Shiite Muslim Islamic Republic.
