TEHRAN -- Terrorists opened fire on a car carrying a senior Islamic Revolution Guards Corp (IRGC) commander in southeastern Iran early on Saturday, martyring a bodyguard, the official news agency IRNA reported.
Brigadier General Hussein Almassi, a commander in Sistan-Baluchistan province, was unhurt after the attack and the attackers were captured.
Mahmoud Absalan, the bodyguard who was martyred in the attack that occurred near a checkpoint in the provincial capital Zahedan, was identified as the son of General Parviz Absalan, another senior IRGC commander in the region.
The attack came on a night celebrated by many devout Iranians as Islam’s holiest, which this year coincided with events marking the anniversary of the IRGC’s establishment after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
In 2009, a terrorist martyred six senior IRGC commanders and more than 29 other people in Sistan-Baluchistan.
On Wednesday, Iran’s Intelligence Ministry arrested three agents working for the Mossad spy agency in Sistan-Baluchestan.
They were involved in disseminating classified information and documents, the ministry said in a statement. They were arrested upon a judicial order, it said without specifying their nationalities.
In July, the Intelligence Ministry arrested a network of Mossad agents at Western borders, confiscating a large cache of weapons and ammunition that they were planning to use to provoke riots and terror inside the country. They were captured as they tried to sneak into Iran.
Iranian security forces also dismantled in March two foreign-backed terrorist teams, which were plotting to assassinate several foreign nationals working on infrastructure projects in Sistan-Baluchestan.