Gunmen kill five police officers in southeast Iran

Unidentified gunmen attacked two police patrol units near Iranshahr in Iran’s southeastern Sistan-Baluchestan province on Friday, killing five officers, according to state media.

Police said the attackers opened fire on vehicles stationed on the Khash-Iranshahr road.

The attack is the latest in a surge of violence in the province, which borders Pakistan and Afghanistan and has long been a hotspot for militant activity and drug trafficking.

The Sunni militant group Jaish al-Adl, designated a terrorist organization by both Iran and the United States, has claimed responsibility for several recent assaults, including a July attack on a courthouse in Zahedan that killed nine and clashes in Saravan earlier this month.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Sunday their forces had killed six militants and destroyed two hideouts in coordinated raids in the province, seizing explosives, detonators and communications gear.

“Two terrorist teams were destroyed,” the Guards said, adding that local residents had helped identify militant safe houses.

The IRGC’s Quds Base, which oversees forces in Sistan-Baluchestan and neighboring Kerman, said the militants had planned sabotage and bombings.

Last Friday, Jaish al-Adl claimed responsibility for an earlier shooting in Iranshahr that killed one police officer and wounded another.

Earlier in August, Iranian police said three militants and one officer were killed in a clash in Saravan, while in late July nine people died in an assault on a courthouse in the provincial capital Zahedan, which the group also claimed.