ERBIL, Kurdistan Region – At least five Iranian policemen were killed on Tuesday in clashes with a Baluchi militant group in the southeastern Sistan and Baluchestan province, state media reported. “This evening, a number of miscreants attacked a police patrol that was on a mission in Sib and Souran district, and unfortunately five police officers were martyred in this attack and one person was injured,” Alireza Marhamati, deputy governor of Sistan and Baluchestan, told state media. Jaish al-Adl (Justice Army), a Baluchi Sunni jihadist group operating across the restive, sparsely-populated border regions, claimed responsibility for the attack. Sistan and Baluchestan province, near the Pakistani border, is one of the only Sunni-majority provinces in Shiite-dominated Iran. There are a number of Baluchi armed groups active in the area that carry out regular bombings and suicide attacks. Jaish al-Adl, has carried out a number of suicide attacks on Iranian security forces, killing dozens in the border areas. The group was added to the list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations in 2019 by the administration of former US president Donald Trump. The designation was in response to a deadly attack by the group on the IRGC, which killed 27 Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) members near Sistan and Baluchestan’s provincial capital of Zahedan. Last week, Jaish al-Adl carried out one of their deadliest attacks in years, killing 16 members of Iranian security forces, including IRGC members, in Sistan and Baluchestan.
