(Reuters) – Iranian police announced the arrest on Saturday of a senior operative of Islamic State with two other members of the group accused of planning a suicide attack during next week’s celebrations marking the end of the holy month of Ramadan.
The police said Mohammad Zaker, known as “Ramesh”, and the other two were arrested in Karaj, west of the capital Tehran, following clashes, according to Iranian media. Eight others accompanying the men were also detained, they said.
Islamic State claimed responsibility for two explosions in Iran in January that killed nearly 100 people and wounded scores at a memorial marking the fourth anniversary of the assassination of top commander Qassem Soleimani in Iraq in 2020 by a U.S. drone.
In a statement posted on its affiliated Telegram channels, the militant Sunni Muslim group, which harbours a virulent hatred for Iran’s dominant Shi’ite sect, said two IS members had detonated explosive belts in the crowd that had gathered at the cemetery in the southeastern Iranian city of Kerman.
In 2022 Islamic State took responsibility for an attack on a Shi’ite shrine in Iran that killed 15 people. Earlier attacks claimed by Islamic State include twin bombings in 2017 that targeted Iran’s parliament and the tomb of the Islamic Republic’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
(dubai.newsroom@thomsonreuters.com; Editing by William Mallard)
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