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Asharq Al-Awsat
Asharq Al-Awsat
World
Asharq Al-Awsat

Blast Kills One in Restless Iranian Border Area

A picture taken on January 13, 2020 shows a general view of a village in Iran's Sistan-Baluchistan region during floods. (AFP)

An explosion killed one person and injured three others on Sunday in a southeastern Iranian town that was the center of bloody unrest last month, Iran’s state news agency IRNA reported.

A Revolutionary Guards statement quoted by the agency blamed what it called “terrorist” groups for the blast in a square in Saravan, near the border with Pakistan.

Earlier this month a UN human rights spokesman said at least a dozen people and possibly up to 23 had been killed in Saravan and other parts of Sistan-Baluchestan province where Revolutionary Guards and security forces used lethal force against fuel couriers from ethnic minorities, and protesters.

The shooting of people carrying fuel across the border led to protests that spread from Saravan to other areas of Sistan-Baluchestan, including the capital, Zahedan.

Iran has some of the lowest fuel prices in the world and there is some fuel-smuggling to neighboring countries.

The impoverished province has long been the scene of sporadic clashes between security forces and separatist militants and smugglers carrying opium from Afghanistan, the world’s top producer of the drug.

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