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| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| Iran kills Jundallah leader |
| 2006-04-08 |
| Iran has killed the leader and 11 members of a Sunni militant group responsible for murdering 26 people in southeastern Iran, press reports said. "Abdolmalek Rigi, leader of the terrorist group, the Jundullah (Soldiers of God) ... was killed in an operation on the border with Afghanistan," Iran's hardline Kayhan daily said, quoting an unidentified source in the interior ministry. The group had reportedly carried out an ambush in the southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchistan in March that left 26 people dead and another 12 missing, according to Kayhan. In January, the group claimed the execution of one of nine Iranian soldiers it kidnapped along the Pakistani border a month earlier. The government said later that the other soldiers had been freed, according to AFP. The report said the rebels had intended to ask for ransoms and the release of their men detained by the Islamic Republic. The mostly Sunni Muslim province of Sistan-Baluchistan, in predominantly Shiite Iran, is notoriously lawless. It is a key transit route for opium and other drugs from Afghanistan and Pakistan headed for Europe and the Persian Gulf. |
| Posted by:Dan Darling |