February 15, 2019
One Iranian policeman was killed and another is in a coma after gunmen opened fire at the officers as they patrolled in the middle of the night February 6 in Lorestan Province, not a normal locale for such incidents.
The deputy police chief of Lorestan Province, Ali Mir-Ahmadi, said that at 2 a.m. local time two gunmen opened fire when officers tried to approach a suspicious vehicle parked next to a gas station on Chaghravand Highway, north of Khorramabad.
The attackers either opened fire at a fuel truck parked at the gas station or a stray bullet hit the truck, which exploded. The area is thinly populated and no injuries were reported, though windows in nearby buildings were blown out.
The police said the attackers stole a parked car and fled the scene. State television later said that five men had been arrested. It didn’t explain why five were arrested if two were involved in the attack.
A video posted on social media showed the burned fuel truck and indicated the incident occurred in an unpopulated area.
State television portrayed the incident as a terrorist attack, asserting the attackers came from two different groups, which it did not name.
However, the remoteness of the site and the absence of any obvious political target nearby questioned whether this was a terrorist incident.
The police did not say why the two officers in the police car were suspicious of the vehicle at the gas station.
Although the deputy police chief was quoted as saying the tanker truck blew up in a “horrific explosion,” the video showed the tanker truck was still whole after the explosion, except for the rear end of the tank being blown out.
Iranian police are sensitive to potential terrorist attacks because there has been a rash of them recently. However, they normally target police, political or military sites.
The recent targets have been the police headquarters in Chabahar in December by Baluchi rebels, Pasdar units in a military parade in Ahvaz last September by Arab separatists and the Majlis office building in Tehran in June 2017 by the Islamic State.
Apart from the Majlis attack, most incidents take place in areas with heavy minority populations and a record of opposition to a unified Iran. That is not true of Lorestan Province.
Meanwhile, there are constant attacks by Baluchi rebels on border outposts next to Pakistan and police stations in Sistan va Baluchistan Province. There was another such attack January 29 in which four police officers were injured when two small bombs went off in front of a police station in Zahedan. Provincial Police Chief Sardar Qanbari said officers were checking a suspicious package when it went off. When other officers responded, a second bomb went off.
Four days later, a Basij base in Nikshahr in the same province was attacked, with one Basiji killed and several wounded.
The Baluchi rebel band Jaish ul-Adl later claimed responsibility for both incidents.
A few days earlier, on January 26, assailants opened fire on a police patrol car in Bandar Imam Khomeini in Khuzestan Province, an Arab area, killing both officers inside. The attackers sprayed the windshield of the car with AK-47 automatic rifle fire. The police said the Al-Ahwaziyah separatist band had claimed responsibility.