Asia

Home page

Asia

18 Die in Blast at Iranian Military Base

13 October 2010 22:42 (UTC +04:00)

Baku â€“ APA. An explosion on Tuesday at a Revolutionary Guards base in a remote area of southwestern Iran killed 18 members of the powerful military organization and wounded 14 more, Iranian state news media reported on Wednesday, APA reports quoting â€œThe New York Timesâ€.
In a statement, the Revolutionary Guards said the blast was caused by a fire spreading to an ammunition store at the base, which the research group Global Security says houses underground launch and storage facilities for Iranâ€™s medium-range Shahab-3 ballistic missiles. However, the base is located near the city of Khorramabad, about 300 miles from Tehran and close to Iranâ€™s restive Kurdistan region, the site in recent months of several attacks on Revolutionary Guards installations and personnel.
Last week, two Guards soldiers and five Kurdish militants were killed in a gunfight in, Sanandaj, the capital of Kurdistan Province.
In September, a bomb attack on a military parade in the ethnic Kurdish city of Mahabad killed 12 civilian spectators and injured dozens more. Iranian officials accused â€œthe Zionist regime and its alliesâ€ for masterminding the attack. State media said that Revolutionary Guard forces crossed into neighboring Iraq over the following days killing 30 Kurdish fighters who were said to be involved in the bombing.
Formed in the early years of the war with Iraq in the 1980s, the Revolutionary Guards Corps has expanded under Iranâ€™s president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, into a vast military-economic conglomerate with growing political ambitions. It is widely thought to have been instrumental in the violent crackdown on Iranâ€™s political opposition following last yearâ€™s disputed presidential election and to be leading Iranâ€™s nuclear program.
In June, the United Nations imposed sanctions aimed specifically at restricting the financial resources of the Revolutionary Guards and its affiliate companies.