Terrorists kill Iranian police in cross-border attack

March 1, 2007 - 0:0
TEHRAN (Press TV) -- Two police officers were killed and four others kidnapped during Wednesday in an ambush by terrorists in the southeastern Iranian province of Sistan-Baluchestan.

Police Chief Esmaeil Ahmadi-Moqaddam told IRNA the "police fell victim to an ambush by rebels who killed two and took four hostage".

The terrorists were chased into Pakistan by Iranians guards, said Ahmadi-Moqaddam.

He complained of a "lack of cooperation from Pakistan" in the campaign against Iran's domestic terrorism. The police chief called Pakistan's reaction to violence on the two countries' borders "unacceptable".

Sistan-Baluchestan is home to a minority population of Baluch Sunnis and borders Pakistan on the south.

In a recent attack in the province's capital Zahedan, 11 members of Iran's Revolutionary Guards Corps were killed and 30 others wounded.

The increase in cross-border terrorism inside the Iranian province has prompted Iran to pressure Pakistan for an explanation.

Iranian media reported the Zahedan attack was part of a U.S. plan to provoke ethnic and religious violence inside Iran.

Following preliminary investigations of the attack the Pakistan ambassador was summoned to the Iranian Foreign Office, where Tehran accused Islamabad of allowing terrorists to use Pakistan's territory for launching cross-border attacks into Iran.

An article earlier this week in the Sunday Telegraph accused the United States of funding terror groups to "sow" discord between Iran's diverse ethnic communities. The article blamed the CIA for supplying cash and weapons to groups entrenched along Iran's borders "that resort to terrorist methods".

Meanwhile an Iranian official speaking on conditions of anonymity told France News Agency weapons used in the recent attacks on Iranian soil were British and U.S.-made. John Pike, the head of an independent Washington-based security analysis firm Global Security, has said the "activities of the ethnic groups have heated up over the last two years and it would be a scandal if that was not at least in part the result of CIA activity."