A suicide bombing struck a large crowd at military parade in western Iran on Wednesday, killing at least nine people and injuring 20 during a nationalist holiday meant to underscore Iran's battle readiness, Iranian media reported.
| I hate suicide boomers, even when they go after people I don't like. |
According to Iran's Arabic language Al-Alam television channel, the bombing struck a large crowd gathered in the city of Mahabad for annual Sacred Defense Week celebrations marking the 1988 end of the Iran- Iraq war.
Officials described the bombing as a "terrorist attack" that took place about 11 a.m. along a sidewalk. No one immediately claimed responsibility for the attack.
Mahabad is in Iran's Kurdish heartland and carries enormous symbolic weight for ethnic Kurds throughout the world. It was the capital of a short-lived Kurdish autonomous republic set up in 1946 and was the birthplace of Massoud Barzani, the de facto leader of Iraq's semi-autonomous Kurdistan region.
| Both the Mad Mullahs™ and the LA Times make sure to blame the Kurd separatists. They might be right, but it's sad to see the Times parrot the party line. |
The Kurdish separatist militant group PEJAK, Party for the Free Life of Kurdistan, operates in the area of Mahabad and has clashed with Iranian troops in recent years. PEJAK is the Iranian branch of the Kurdistan Workers Party, or PKK, which has been fighting the Turkish government for decades. |