TEHRAN (Dispatches) -- Iran has tracked down and killed several terrorists including the alleged mastermind of twin attacks in Tehran last week, a security official and a minister have said.
Dozens of suspects have been arrested since the attacks on Wednesday martyred 17 people in the first assault in Iran to be claimed by Daesh.
Police late Sunday killed four Daesh elements in the southern province of Hormozgan, the ISNA news agency on Monday reported police chief Azizollah Maleki as saying.
"Two of the killed criminals were foreign nationals... while the identity of other members is being investigated," Maleki said, adding that weapons and a Daesh flag were seized during the raid.
Iran has said five Iranians, who had joined Daesh and travelled to its Iraq and Syria bastions, carried out Wednesday's attacks on the parliament and the mausoleum of the founder of the Islamic Republic, Imam Khomeini.
Late Saturday, Intelligence Minister Mahmoud Alavi said the mastermind behind the attacks had been tracked down and killed outside the country.
"The mastermind who controlled the team... who had fled outside the country... paid the price for his crimes, with the cooperation of intelligence services of allied countries," Alavi told state television, without providing further details.
At least 41 Daesh members have been arrested since the attacks, according to Alavi, who said Iran has dismantled militant cells with increasing frequency in recent months.
In the entire year to March 2017 "we dismantled 45 cells, while in the past two-and-a-half months alone we have dismantled more than 25 terrorist cells," he said.
Officials have reported the arrests of Daesh members in and around Tehran, as well as in the country's center, southern governorates, and western provinces near the Iraqi border.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qasemi on Monday described the attacks "militarily crude and worthless... done to create alarm and terror for political exploitation”.
He said that more than 80 world countries had extended their condolences to the survivors of the attacks, saying, "This shows that there is appropriate sensitivity across the international community vis-à-vis such painful incidents.”
In Syria, the spokesman said, the U.S. was bombing Syrian forces to "buy time for terrorists at certain junctures whenever they are caught in undesirable situations”.
U.S. measures in Syria have always been viewed with suspicion, Qasemi said, adding if the Americans favor "an independent country that fights terrorism, they should reconsider their behavior, abandon such measures, and let the Syrian army and government establish stability and security and defend their own country’s integrity”.
U.S. forces in Syria on Thursday downed a drone operated by government forces close to the Jordanian border.