[FREE IRAN Project] In The Spirit Of Cyrus The Great

[Liberator]

Eight killed in pre-vote bombings in Iran
TEHRAN (AFP)

http://c.moreover.com/click/here.pl?l334440572


A TV grab taken 12 June 2005 from Iranian Al-Alam TV shows a wrecked car in Iran's restive southwestern city of Ahvaz, an ethnic-Arab majority city close to the border with Iraq, following a string of bomb attacks that targetted several public buildings. At least eight people were killed and 75 others injured when a string of bomb attacks rocked the city just days before the Islamic republic's presidential election.
At least eight people were killed and 75 others injured when a string of bomb attacks rocked Iran's restive southwestern city of Ahvaz just days before the Islamic republic's presidential election.
Four blasts targetted several public buildings in Ahvaz, an ethnic-Arab majority city close to the border with Iraq and capital of oil-rich Khuzestan province.
"The victims were two employees of the budget planning organisation and six residents of the city who were outside the prefecture and housing ministry office," deputy provincial police commander General Hassan Assad Masjedi told the official news agency IRNA.
"Because of the seriousness of some of the injuries, the death toll could rise further," he added.
Khuzestan's deputy governor Gholam Reza Shariati said the unidentified attackers were trying to damage "the territorial integrity of the country and the election process".
Iran is due to go to the polls to elect a new president on Friday.
"We cannot say for now who committed these attacks, but the intelligence ministry is investigating," Shariati told state televsion, but added: "the attacks are a failure, because in the past the regime has been confronted by far worse."
Ahvaz was also hit by several days of ethnic unrest in April, violence that prompted a wave of arrests.
Interior ministry spokesman Jahanbaksh Khanjani told AFP one of the blasts -- the first to strike Iranian soil in several years -- was a car bombing outside the Ahvaz prefecture.
The "strong explosions" occurred between 9:00 am and 11:00 am (0430 to 0630 GMT). State television pictures showed the ground around the blast site strewn with broken glass, rubble and pools of blood.
"One of the bombs was inside a car parked outside the prefecture," Mohammad Kianoush-Rad, a former parliament deputy, told AFP by telephone from the city.
"Two others exploded in the Amaniyeh administrative district. A local housing ministry building was hit. The fourth exploded in the Padadshahr residential district," he added, saying officials had also appealed for blood donors.
Quoted by the state news agency IRNA, the interior ministry's security affairs director Amir Hossein Motahar said another one of the blasts was outside the home of the director of Iranian state television operations in Ahvaz.
One bomb also exploded while police were trying to defuse it, he said.
IRNA said one of the bombs appeared to have been hidden in the toilets of one of the buildings, the inside of which was shown on television to have been almost totally gutted.
"I heard a huge explosion," another witness, Anush Darihaki, told AFP. "All the roads near the explosions were sealed off by police. All the windows in the areas were shattered."
Ahvaz, situated around 500 kilometres (320 miles) southeast of Tehran and 50 kilometres (32 miles) from the border with Iraq, was rocked by ethnic violence from April 15-18.
According to official figures, five people were killed in those clashes, which appeared to have been sparked by a forged letter, dating back seven years and attributed to then vice president Mohammad Ali Abtahi, calling for modifications to Khuzestan's ethnic composition.
Iran's 26-year-old Islamic regime blamed foreigners and "counter-revolutionaries" for the tensions, but admitted the province's development was still hampered by the devastation it suffered during the 1980-88 war with neighbouring Iraq.
On Friday Iran is due to go the polls to elect a successor to reformist President Mohammad Khatami.
Informal opinion polls in the Iranian press suggest that none of the eight candidates will be able to secure more than 50 percent of the vote needed to win. That means the top two would have to go into a run-off -- unprecedented in the 26-year history of the Islamic republic.
Tipped as the frontrunner among the eight candidates is powerful ex-president Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a pragmatic conservative. Trailing him are the main reformist candidate Mostafa Moin and the hardline former national police chief, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf.
© 2005 AFP
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JAVID IRAN!



www.anjomane-padeshahi.org
http://aryamehr11.blogspot.com/

[Liberty Now !]

So far the oppositions beleive these are part of INTERNAL FIGHTINGS between regime's diff. fractions over the elections.

THE POWER STRUGGLE IN IRI IS RISING, AND MORE ASSASINATIONS AND ATTACKS ARE SAID TO BE PLANNED. ESPECIALLY IF THE SO CALLED REFORMISTS WIN THE ELECTION!

JUST LAST WEEK, MANY OF THE 'REFORM' GROUPS LEADERS WERE BRUTALLY ATTACKED WITH HARDLINE AGENTS.

THE BOMBS EXPLODED IN AHVAZ DAMAGED THE GOVERNMENT ESTABLISHMENTS, MEANING THE 'REFORM' FRACTIONS!

IRI BLAMES THE 'ENEMY' AND OPPOSITION FOR THESE BOMBS.
WHICH IS NOT TRUE.

REMEMBER THEY HAVE DONE SO BEFORE, AND THIS IS NOT THE FIRST BOMBINGS CARRIED OUT BY IRI IN IRAN!

CINEMA REX- ABADAN, MOSQUES, AND MAJLIS WERE SOME OF THE PREVIOUS TARGETS.
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Paayande Iran