TEHRAN — A delegation from Iran’s supreme
leader
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei expressed sadness and promised solutions in a
visit to a southeastern province where dozens have been killed in unrest,
official media said.
اضافة اعلان
The violence in
Zahedan, the capital of Sistan-Baluchistan province which borders Pakistan,
erupted on September 30, and authorities say six members of the security forces
were among the dead.
The casualties
came against the backdrop of nationwide unrest that followed the September 16
death of
Mahsa Amini, 22, after her arrest by morality police in Tehran for
allegedly violating Iran’s strict dress code for women.
Some local figures
said the protests in Zahedan were triggered by anger over the reported rape of
a teenage girl by a police officer.
Overseas-based
activists accused security forces of firing on demonstrators.
Zahedan is one of
the few Sunni-majority cities in predominantly Shiite Iran.
“We came to share
the sadness felt by the supreme leader concerning the incidents which happened”
in the province, said Mohammad-Javad Haj Ali Akbari, spokesman for the
delegation which arrived Saturday.
He said they were
also there to “report on measures decided (by Khamenei) to resolve these
problems,” the state news agency IRNA quoted him as saying on Sunday.
Akbari also
referred to a “special plan” from Khamenei to benefit the province’s people,
but IRNA gave no further details on such measures.
He also met the
imam of Zahedan’s Makki mosque, Iran’s largest Sunni house of worship, and said
he wanted to see relatives of those killed or wounded in the incidents “to
console them.”
In late October
the Sistan-Baluchistan Security Council said it had concluded an investigation
that found “negligence” by officers and the deaths of “innocent” civilians
during the unrest.
The council
announced the dismissal of Zahedan’s police chief as well as the head of a police
station.
Poverty-stricken
Sistan-Baluchistan had previously seen clashes with drug smuggling gangs as
well as rebels from the Baluchi minority and Sunni Muslim extremist groups.
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