Iran Police Defuse Bomb Under Bridge in Restive City

TurkishPress.com:

Iranian police said they had defused a large bomb planted under a bridge in the restive southwestern city of Ahvaz just days after a double bomb attack there killed six people and injured more than 100. READ MORE

The police information centre told state television on Tuesday that local residents tipped off police after spotting a suspicious package under a busy bridge in the city, the capital of oil-rich Khuzestan province and dominated by ethnic minority Arabs.

The report said the package -- wired up and containing eight anti-personnel mines, around a kilogram (two pounds) of TNT, one stun grenade and a large number of fuses -- was successfully defused late on Monday.

Khuzestan's deputy governor general in charge of security affairs, Gholam Reza Shariati, and other officials also told the student news agency ISNA that the bomb was clearly aimed at destroying Kianpars bridge, which links the east and west of Ahvaz city.

Two bombs exploded outside a crowded market late Saturday in Ahvaz.

Funerals of the victims were held on Monday, but the death toll could still rise given that several of those injured remain in a critical condition.

No-one has yet claimed responsibility for the attack.

Ahvaz has been hit by a wave of unrest this year, including ethnic riots in April and a series of car bombings prior to Iran's presidential elections in June.

Iranian officials have in the past blamed Arab separatist groups or Iranian opposition militants they say enjoy backing across the border in Iraq.

Hardline President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has said he suspected British involvement in Saturday's bombing, an allegation that came hot on the heels of British complaints of Iranian meddling in Iraq.

"Iran's security and intelligence officials have come across British footprints" in past attacks in the area, he said, adding that "we are strongly suspicious of British forces committing terrorist acts".

A more explicit allegation was made earlier Sunday by the head of Iran's Basij volunteer militia, Brigadier General Mohammad Hejazi, who said the blasts in Ahvaz "had a British accent".

Britain has denied the allegations and condemned the attacks.

It says it has also told Tehran that "the British government and British forces in Iraq stand ready to help in anyway they can to prevent attacks of this kind or identify those responsible and bring them to justice".

Britain's charge d'affaires to Iran was summoned to the Iranian foreign ministry Monday to hear a complaint over British allegations that Iran is meddling in Iraq.

British Prime Minister Tony Blair and other senior officials said last week there was evidence that a series of deadly attacks in southern Iraq lead back to Iran and the Lebanese Shiite militant group Hezbollah.

Iran has dismissed the allegations as "absurd and baseless".