United for Peace of Pierce County, WA - We nonviolently oppose the reliance on unilateral military actions rather than cooperative diplomacy.

On Wednesday, in an eastern Iranian city, at least eleven people were killed when a bus carrying members of Iran's Revolutionary Guard was destroyed by a car bomb. -- The attack took place in Zahedan, a city of about 600,000 near the Iranian border with Afghanistan and Pakistan, in Baluchistan, where there have long been reports of U.S. covert activity. -- The Baluchis [or Baloch] are a large ethnic group, most of whom live in Pakistan; Iran has controlled western Baluchistan since the 19th century. -- "An attack of this size and nature a bomb strike on an elite force in broad daylight in an open street is unprecedented in Iran," AFP reported.[1] -- Last month, explosions in the Iranian city of Khorramshahr, north of the oil port Abadan, as well as in Baluchistan, preceded the Jan. 10 address in which President George W. Bush announced his administration's intent to confront Iran, so the coincidence of the Zahedan attack and Bush's Feb. 14 news conference is noteworthy. -- Stratfor and Debka reported that at least 18 died in the attack. -- AP reported that Iranian officials blamed the U.S. for supporting the group that claimed responsibility for the bombing.[2] -- The New York Times posted a large photograph of the remains of the bus.[3] -- Bloomberg News said Iranian state media was reporting that the attack on the bus was a complex operation: "Armed men on two motorcycles opened fire on the bus as it got near the car, parked along the road. The bomb was detonated as the bus slowed down, IRNA said."[4] ...

Eleven people were killed yesterday when a car bomb ripped through a bus carrying members of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards in a sensitive southeastern border province, official media reported.

The bus was taking the Guards from their housing compound in the city of Zahedan to a military base just after daybreak when gunfire forced it to stop in front of the booby-trapped car, which then exploded.

An attack of this size and nature a bomb strike on an elite force in broad daylight in an open street is unprecedented in Iran.

According to unconfirmed website reports, the attack was claimed by a shadowy Sunni militant group, Jundallah, which has been blamed for a string of armed incidents in the volatile Sistan-Baluchestan province.

Television pictures broadcast on Iran's Arabic-language station Al-Alam showed that the bus had been blown away to a twisted frame of wreckage by the blast and a large crowd had gathered at the scene.

It was not immediately clear whether all the dead were from the Revolutionary Guards, Iran's elite ideological army. Ethna Ashara said 31 people were wounded.

Irna's correspondent in Zahedan quoted witnesses as saying that militants placed a booby-trapped car in the path of a bus carrying Revolutionary Guards ground forces and detonated the explosives when the bus drew near.

The witnesses said that among the militants were motorcyclists who shot at the bus to force it to stop.

The bomb inside the car, a standard Iranian Peykan model, was apparently detonated by remote control, they added.

Irna reported that two militants found carrying grenades and camcorders had been apprehended by the public and arrested while three others were detained later.

City governor Hassan Ali Nouri told Irna that the main "agent" behind the bombing had been killed by security forces, without giving details.

Zahedan, a dusty and tense border city, is the capital of Sistan-Baluchestan province which borders both Afghanistan and Pakistan and has been the centre of low-level unrest in the region over the past months.

Earlier this year, four members of the Iranian security forces were killed in the city when armed men opened fire on their vehicle.

Afghan bandits in March year last year shot dead 22 people travelling between Zahedan and the neighbouring border city of Zabol.

Hossein Ali Shahriari, a deputy representing Zahedan in parliament, blasted the police and military for failing to take appropriate security measures, the Isna agency reported.

The upsurge in unrest in Sistan-Baluchestan also comes after violence in Iran's oil-rich southwestern province of Khuzestan, which has a minority Arab population.

Bomb attacks in October 2005 killed six people in the provincial capital of Ahvaz and wounded nearly 100. Another double bombing in January 2006 killed eight and wounded 46.

An unverifiable website message attributed to Jundallah said it carried out the Zahedan bombing in revenge for the recent executions of those found guilty of the Ahvaz attacks.

Iranian officials have accused Britain and the United States of supporting ethnic minority rebels operating in the sensitive border areas.

IRAN ACCUSES U.S. OF BACKING TERRORISTS WHO KILLED SOLDIERS
By Ali Akbar Dareini

TEHRAN -- A car bomb killed 11 members of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards on Wednesday in the deadliest attack in years near the Pakistani border, and Iran accused the United States of backing militants to destabilize the country.

A Sunni Muslim militant group called Jundallah, or God's Brigade, which has been blamed for past attacks on Iranian troops, claimed responsibility for the bombing, according to the semiofficial Fars news agency.

An al-Qaida-linked group of the same name has carried out attacks in neighboring Pakistan. Iranian officials say the militants in southeast Iran find a safe haven in Pakistan, but it is not clear whether the two groups are connected. Pakistani officials say they are not.

The blast represented a sharp flare-up of violence in the remote southeast corner of Iran, near Pakistan and Afghanistan, that has long been plagued by lawlessness. The area is a key crossing point for opium from Afghanistan and often sees clashes between police and drug gangs.

At the same time, Jundallah has waged a low-level insurgency in the area, led by Abdulmalak Rigi, a member of Iran's ethnic Baluchi minority, a community that is Sunni Muslim and is present in Pakistan and Afghanistan. Rigi has said his group is fighting for the rights of impoverished Sunnis under Iran's Shiite government.

Five of those behind Wednesday's explosion were arrested, Soltan Ali Mir, a local Interior Ministry official, told the official Islamic Republic News Agency. The Fars news agency reported four arrested and cited officials saying they were not Iranian citizens.

Iranian officials blamed "insurgents" and "terrorists" for Wednesday's bombing -- and accused the United States of backing them to sow instability in Iran.

"This was done by a group that gets support from America," the Islamic Republic News Agency said, quoting unidentified officials.

Iran has increasingly raised the alarm that the United States may attack it or try to foment an uprising against the government as the standoff between the two countries has escalated in recent weeks over the country's nuclear program and over the turmoil in Iraq.

President Bush on Wednesday repeated accusations that Iran was supplying weapons to militants in Iraq and vowed to stop the support. The U.S. has also built up its military presence in the Persian Gulf and has vowed action against Iranian operatives in Iraq.

Iranian officials have often raised concerns that Washington might incite members of Iran's many ethnic and religious minorities against the Shiite-led government.

Wednesday's bombing took place near Zahedan, capital of Sistan-Baluchestan province, when a car packed with explosives pulled to a stop in front of a bus carrying members of the Revolutionary Guard.

The car exploded, killing 11 guards and wounding 31, the provincial governor, Hassan Ali Nouri, told IRNA. He said one attacker was also killed.

CAR BOMB IN IRAN DESTROYS A BUS CARRYING REVOLUTIONARY GUARDS
By Nazila Fathi

[PHOTO CAPTION: At least 11 people were killed when a car bomb exploded near a bus carrying Revolutionary Guards Wednesday in the southeastern city of Zahedan.]

TEHRAN -- A car loaded with explosives blew up on Wednesday in front of a bus carrying members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards in the southeastern city of Zahedan, killing at least 11 people and wounding 34 others, the state news media reported.

The governor of Zahedan, Hassan Ali Nouri, told state-run television that the car exploded at 6:37 a.m. as the bus taking members of the Revolutionary Guards to work approached.

Television news reports showed videotape of the mangled bus, with all its windows shattered.

The explosion was the largest in this troubled region along the Afghan and Pakistani borders since last March, when an attack on a convoy in the same province, Sistan-Baluchistan, killed 22 officials.

In December 2005, a car carrying President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was ambushed when he was on a visit in the same province. The attack, near the city of Zabol, killed one of his bodyguards and wounded another. Further details of that attack have not been disclosed.

The semiofficial Fars news agency reported that a Baluchi group opposed to the government, the Jondollah Organization of Iran, claimed responsibility for the attack on Wednesday.

Hossein Ali Shahriari, the representative from Zahedan in Parliament, said the attack had been carried out by “insurgents and smugglers who are led by the world imperialism,” a common reference to the United States and Britain. Iranian officials have repeatedly accused the United States and Britain of provoking ethnic unrest in Iran and of supporting opposition groups.

Zahedan, the capital of Sistan-Baluchistan, is home to many ethnic Baluchis, who are Sunni Muslims. A majority of Iranians are Shiites.

The region has also been a major gateway for drug traffickers from Pakistan and Afghanistan. Iran has built a security trench at the border, but says more than 3,300 security force members have died in fighting drug smugglers since the country’s Islamic revolution in 1979.

There has been increasing unrest in the province in the past year. The Baluchis accuse the government of discriminatory and repressive policies.

Iran has said that Jondollah and its leader, Abdolmalek Rigi, have ties to Al Qaeda and drug traffickers. However, the group denied the accusation in a letter that was published in the newspaper the *Guardian* in Britain in October.

Jondollah claimed responsibility for the attack last March that killed the 22 officials and wounded six others. The group has also claimed responsibility for kidnapping soldiers in the province.

The government has stepped up punishing those behind ethnic unrest. ISNA reported that two men accused of kidnapping and hostage-taking were hanged in Zahedan last June.

IRAN BOMB TARGETS REVOLUTIONARY GUARDS; 11 DIE
By Ladane Nasseri and Marc Wolfensberger

Eleven employees of Iran's Revolutionary Guards died in a bombing in Sunni Muslim-dominated Sistan-Baluchistan province, where attacks on the Shiite Muslim-led central government have escalated in the past year.

Thirty-one other employees were hurt when the car bomb exploded early today in Zahedan near a bus belonging to Revolutionary Guard ground forces, a provincial official in the city, who declined to be identified, said in a telephone interview. The toll was revised after an initial report that 18 people died, the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency said.

Armed men on two motorcycles opened fire on the bus as it got near the car, parked along the road. The bomb was detonated as the bus slowed down, IRNA said.

"Five terrorists directly responsible for the Zahedan bombing have been arrested," IRNA cited Soltan-Ali Mir, political head at Sistan-Baluchistan's provincial office, as saying, without providing details of the suspects or the motive for the attack.

The "main culprit" was killed by security forces at the scene of the accident, Zahedan Governor Hassan-Ali Nouri was quoted as saying by IRNA in a separate report.

"A group known as 'Jundallah' under the leadership of Abdolmalek Rigi, one of the insurgents from the east of the country, has issued a statement, taking responsibility for the terrorist move" the state-run Fars news agency reported.

Jundallah, or "the Army of God," is a militant Sunni group based in Pakistan and operating in Iran's southeastern border.

Nationalist revolts by Sunnis from the province's Baluchi ethnic group preceded the 1979 Islamic Revolution that toppled the country's monarchy, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees said in a 1997 report. The unrest has continued since the religious leadership appointed a Shiite member of the ethnic Sistan minority as the province's governor, the UNHCR said.

The Zahedan attack is the most deadly in the southeastern province since May, when officials said insurgents killed 12 civilians. Iranian forces responded, killing four militants. Insurgents killed 22 people driving between Zabol and Zahedan in March. In April, insurgents killed two army officers and injured a cleric in the province, officials said.

A group of Iranian soldiers was kidnapped in November 2005 and released two months later. In videotapes, the kidnappers identified themselves as members of Sunni militant group Jundallah.

The Revolutionary Guards are the members of the military most loyal to the Shiite clerics who control the government.

Zahedan is the capital of Sistan-Baluchistan province, which is bordered by Afghanistan and Pakistan to the east. It is a main entry point for opium and heroin coming from Afghanistan. A local official contacted in Zahedan declined to specify the size of the Sunni majority in the province, saying the information was sensitive. Iran's population is 89 percent Shiite Muslim.

--To contact the reporters on this story: Ladane Nasseri in Tehran at lnasseri@bloomberg.net ; Marc Wolfensberger in Tehran at mwolfens@bloomberg.net