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The Emir of Jundallah, Abdul Malik Baluch, who is also known as Abdul Malik Rigi. |
A Sunni resistance movement took credit for killing two senior Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps commanders and 27 other officers in a suicide attack in southeastern Iran.
Jundallah, or the Soldiers of God, detonated a car bomb at a meeting of Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) commanders and Sunni and Shia tribal leaders in Pishin in the southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchistan.
Brigadier General Nour Ali Shoushtari, the deputy commander for the IRGC’s ground forces, and Brigadier Rajab Ali Mohammadzadeh, the IRGC’s provincial commander for Sistan-Baluchistan, were killed in the attack, according to Press TV. In a press release on its website, Jundallah, also claimed the commanders of Iranshahr Corps, Sarbaz Corps, the Amir al Mo’menin Brigade were also killed in the attack.
Twenty-eight military officers and civilians were reported to have been wounded in the strike.
Another attack against an IRGC convoy was reported in Pishin; casualties were not disclosed, however.
Jundallah is a Baluchi insurgent group that operates in Pakistan’s Baluchistan provinces as well as in Sistan-Baluchistan in Iran. The group was founded in 2003 by Emir Abdul Malik Baluch, who is also known as Abdul Malik Rigi. Rigi currently leads Jundallah, which he renamed the Peoples Resistant Movement of Iran.
Jundallah has conducted numerous attacks against the IRGC and the Iranian government, including the 2005 ambush on President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s motorcade in Sistan-Baluchistan; the 2006 murder of 22 civilians in Tasooki; the 2007 ambush on an IRGC convoy that killed 18 officers in Zahedan; the 2008 kidnapping and execution of 16 Iranian policemen; the 2009 ambush that killed 12 policemen in Saravan; and the 2009 bombing at a mosque in Zahedan that killed 25 people.
The Iranian government accuses the United States, Britain, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, and Afghanistan of covertly backing Jundallah as part of an effort to destabilize the regime.
There is another group called Jundallah, which is based in Pakistan. This group has links with al Qaeda. Dr. Arshad Waheed, an al Qaeda commander who was killed in a US airstrike in South Waziristan in March 2008, had close links to Ata-ur-Rehman, the former leader of Jundallah who was detained by Pakistani security forces. Iran deliberately conflates the two groups and accuses the US of backing the al Qaeda-allied group.
