TEHRAN: Assailants have shot dead two Iranian policemen in Sistan-Baluchestan province, state media reported, the latest in a spate of attacks on security forces in the southeastern region.

The attack occurred in the rugged countryside near Iran’s border with Pakistan, the official news agency IRNA reported late on Wednesday.

“The terrorist attack on a police unit at Taftan in the southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchestan killed two policemen,” IRNA said.

The identity of the assailants and circumstances surrounding the attack were not immediately clear.

Unrest in impoverished Sistan-Baluchestan province — which also borders Afghanistan — has involved drugs-smuggling gangs, rebels from the Baluchi minority and Sunni Muslim extremists.

Similar attacks have previously occurred, including on July 23 when four policemen were killed while on patrol.

That came two weeks after two policemen and four assailants were killed in a shootout in the province later claimed by the jihadist Jaish al-Adl group.

In late May, police said in a report by IRNA that “Taliban forces” had shot at an Iranian police station in Sistan-Baluchestan.

The Sistan-Baluchestan provincial capital Zahedan was also the scene of deadly protests that flared in September last year over the alleged rape of a teenage girl by a police officer.

Published in Dawn, September 8th, 2023