Iran vows revenge after suicide bomber kills 27 elite Revolutionary Guards, demolishing bus in attack
- The attack, which reportedly involved a car packed with explosives, reduced the Iranian troops’ bus to barely recognisable wreckage
- President Hassan Rowhani says country will make ‘mercenary group pay for the blood of our martyrs’
President Hassan Rowhani vowed revenge Thursday against the “mercenary group” behind a suicide bombing which killed 27 people in southeastern Iran and accused the US and Israel of supporting “terrorism”.
“We will certainly make this mercenary group pay for the blood of our martyrs,” the official IRNA news agency quoted the Iranian president as saying in response to Wednesday’s attack.
“The main root of terrorism in the region is America and Zionists, and some oil-producing countries in the region also financially support the terrorists,” he added.
Rowhani was speaking at Tehran’s Mehrabad Airport before leaving for the Russian resort of Sochi for a summit with his Russian and Turkish counterparts Vladimir Putin and Recep Tayyip Erdogan on the future of war-battered Syria.
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Wednesday’s attack, which targeted a busload of Revolutionary Guards in the volatile southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchistan, was one of the deadliest on Iranian security forces in years.