The attack took place outside the Imam Hussein Mosque in the port city of Chahbahar, near the border with Pakistan, the official IRNA news agency said. The bombers targeted a group of worshippers at a ceremony a day before Ashoura. Southeastern Iran is home to an armed Sunni militant group, Jundallah, which has waged sporadic attacks to fight alleged discrimination against the area's Sunni minority in overwhelmingly Shiite Iran. Jundallah later said  it was behind the attack. One of the attackers detonated a bomb outside the mosque and the other struck from inside a crowd of worshippers, state TV reported. Security forces shot one of them, but the bomber was still able to detonate the explosives, the report said, quoting deputy Interior Minister Ali Abdollahi. A third attacker was arrested, state TV said. Forensic official Fariborz Ayati put the number of dead at 38 and said they included women and children, IRNA reported. Mahmoud Mozaffar, a senior Iranian Red Crescent Society official, said emergency services had been put on alert over the past few days because of anonymous threats, according to another news agency, ISNA. The deputy interior minister blamed Sunni militants, an apparent reference to Jundallah. “Evidence and the kind of equipment used suggest that the terrorists were affiliated with extremist ... groups backed by the US and intelligence services of some regional states,” Abdollahi was quoted as saying by state TV.