TEHRAN, 20 August 2007 — Gunmen took as many as 30 people hostage in southeast Iran yesterday after burning vehicles and shooting at passengers, news agencies said, an incident blamed on rebels Tehran has previously linked to Al-Qaeda.
The attackers then took the hostages across the border into Pakistan, state television said.
Some media sources gave lower figures for the number of people seized in the early morning on a road in Sistan-Baluchestan, a volatile eastern border province notorious for frequent clashes between security forces and drug smugglers. The ISNA and Fars news agencies said 30 people were taken hostage, while the state broadcaster said 12 people were seized.
Col. Mohammad Javad Asna-Ashari said the perpetrators belonged to a group led by Abdolmalek Rigi, who Iran has blamed for several other attacks in the southeast of the country, Fars said.
Jundollah (God’s Soldiers), a shadowy Sunni group led by Rigi, in February claimed responsibility for an attack on a bus owned by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards that killed 11 people and it has also been blamed for other violence in the region.
Officials have said Rigi was a cell leader of Osama Bin Laden’s Al-Qaeda network in Iran.
Giving details about yesterday’s hostage-taking, Asna-Ashari said several armed men closed a road between the Iranshahr and the port city of Chabahar and set fire to several cars and two trucks carrying oil. The gunmen blocked the way of a passenger bus, ISNA said, but it was not clear whether all the hostages were from the bus.
