Security remains on edge in Iran's restive border province after killing of 5 Basij members

By Syed Zafar Mehdi

TEHRAN, Iran (AA) – Violence continued to escalate in Iran's southeastern Sistan and Baluchestan province following the killing of five paramilitary Basij members of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) on Sunday.

In a statement, the IRGC's public relations department said the five local Basij members were killed in a “terrorist incident” in Saravan County, located in this restive border region.

The Basij is a volunteer paramilitary organization and one of five main branches of the IRGC.

After the incident on Sunday evening, the IRGC said that it had launched a manhunt for the perpetrators.

According to the provincial governor’s office, the five Basij members were targeted during evening prayers.

The attack occurred less than two weeks after the appointment of Mansour Bijar, the province’s first Sunni-Baloch governor. Bijar previously served as the deputy chief for urban development coordination and as director general of the Technical Office in the governor’s office.

Sistan and Baluchestan, with a population of about four million, is one of Iran’s poorest provinces and faces a precarious security situation due to the presence of several militant groups.

Last month, ten police officers were killed in an ambush by armed assailants on police patrol units in the city of Taftan, following clashes between militants and border police.

The Jaish al-Adl militant group, which frequently targets Iranian security forces in the province, claimed responsibility for the attack.

In April, five police officers were killed when militants opened fire on their vehicles near Sib and Soran County, also close to the Pakistan border.

Less than a week earlier, clashes between Jaish al-Adl militants and security forces in the province led to the deaths of ten personnel and eighteen militants.

In January, the IRGC launched missile strikes on Pakistan’s Balochistan province, claiming to target the militant group’s headquarters there.

Pakistan condemned the strikes and responded with its own missile attacks on what it identified as militant positions along the Iran border, escalating tensions between the two countries.

As tensions de-escalated, both countries agreed to cooperate against shared security threats.

Notably, hours before Sunday’s attack, Iran praised actions taken by Pakistani military forces against “strongholds of anti-Iran terrorists” in Balochistan.

“Terrorist groups affiliated with arrogant powers, playing into the hands of the United States and the Israeli regime as mere pawns, had set the common border between Iran and Pakistan as a scene of their acts of sabotage, and were staging terrorist attacks at both sides of the frontier,” read a statement released by the General Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces.