Tehran, Iran -- One of the bodyguards of Iranâs President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was killed and another wounded when an attempt to ambush the presidential motorcade was thwarted in the southeastern province of Sistan and Baluchestan, according to a semi-official newspaper and local residents. âAt 6:50 pm on Thursday, the lead car in the presidential motorcade confronted armed bandits and trouble-makers on the Zabol-Saravan highwayâ, the semi-official Jomhouri Islami reported on Saturday. âIn the ensuing armed clash, the driver of the vehicle, who was an indigenous member of the security services, and one of the presidentâs bodyguards died, while another bodyguard was woundedâ, the newspaper, which was founded by Iranâs Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, wrote.
Ahmadinejad traveled to the restive province, where ethnic Baluchis have been fighting for years for autonomy, on Wednesday and returned to Tehran on Friday afternoon. The newspaper report made no mention of Ahmadinejadâs whereabouts during the attack on his bodyguardsâ vehicle, but Zabol residents reached by telephone said there were rumors in the town that the hard-line president himself was the target of the attack, which took place near Zabol. âMany people have been rounded up for questioning after the attack and the authorities here were clearly shaken by the incidentâ, a Zabol resident told Iran Focus.
The Sunni Baluchis have faced years of religious and racial discrimination under Iranâs Shiite clergy-dominated government.
Ahmadinejad called the Holocaust a âmythâ on Wednesday, on the first day of his trip to the province. âThey have fabricated a legend under the name 'Massacre of the Jews', and they hold it higher than God himself, religion itself and the prophets themselvesâ, he told a crowd in Zahedan, the provincial capital of Sistan and Baluchestan.
