ERBIL, Kurdistan Region - Several Iranian security personnel were reportedly killed or wounded on Tuesday in heavy clashes after armed assailants attacked security facilities in Iran’s southeastern Sistan and Baluchestan province, a rights group reported, amid increasing clashes and attacks in the restive province.
Haalvsh, a human rights group monitoring the Balochi community, cited local sources and eyewitnesses who reported that armed assailants attacked the support unit headquarters in Khash, with the adjacent police station also coming under fire. Several ambulances were reportedly dispatched to the scene.
A Khash resident told Haalvsh that the “shooting began at 4:56 pm and continued intensely for more than an hour.” The resident said roads leading to the police station, including two streets, had been completely blocked, with security forces preventing vehicles and residents from passing.
Haalvsh said it was unable to independently verify the exact number of casualties among security personnel or the armed assailants.
The incident comes amid an escalation in armed confrontations in Sistan and Baluchestan, populated mainly by Iran's ethnic Baloch and Sunni Muslim communities, which have long faced deep-rooted security challenges, as Iranian security forces confront Baloch armed groups and those they deem a threat to state security.
Iran’s state-run Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) reported two armed individuals firing at the headquarters of the support unit in Khash County, in southern Sistan and Baluchestan province late Tuesday evening.
Khash’s deputy governor for political affairs confirmed the incident, stressing that it had not caused even financial damage to residents.
The incident follows a string of deadly clashes in recent weeks.
A retired Iranian police colonel was shot dead on Thursday by armed men outside his home in the city of Iranshahr in Sistan and Baluchestan province, Halvsh reported.
Prior to that incident on Wednesday Iranian security forces shot and killed a Baluch man during a vehicle chase in the country's Sistan-Baluchestan province.
Sistan-Baluchistan remains one of the country’s most impoverished and underserved regions.
Mai Sato, the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran in October raised alarm over the economic marginalization, land confiscation and environmental degradation which “have further deepened poverty in many minority regions.”
“Many Baluch are denied a shenasnameh (identity booklet), limiting access to education,” Sato said in a post on X, noting that “discrimination extends from restrictions on language rights to ethnic stereotyping in state media.”
