Explosion Kills 11 Elite Iranian Guards

People gather around the remains of a bus following an explosion targeting Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards, in Zahedan, southeastern of Iran, on Wednesday, Feb. 14, 2007. A car loaded with explosives blew up near the bus carrying members of the elite Revolutionary Guards in southeastern Iran, killing 18 of the Guards, the state-run news agency reported Wednesday. (AP Photo/IRNA) (Str - Irn)

The car exploded, killing 11 guards and wounding 31, the provincial governor, Hassan Ali Nouri, told IRNA. He said one attacker was also killed in the blast, and IRNA said others in the car fled just before the bomb went off.

Iran has faced several ethnic and religious insurgencies that have carried out sporadic, sometimes deadly attacks in recent years _ though none have amounted to a serious threat to the government.

Besides the violence in the southeast, ethnic Arab Sunni militants have been blamed for bombings in the western city of Ahvaz _ including blasts in 2006 that killed nine people. Iranian Kurds based in northern Iraq have also stepped up incursions into Iran.

Hossein Ali Shahriyari, a lawmaker representing Zahedan, accused U.S. ally Pakistan of allowing a "safe heaven for insurgents" operating in southeastern Iran. In parliament on Wednesday, he called on the government to press Islamabad to crack down on its side of the border.

Little is known about the Jundallah militant group. Iranian state media and officials avoid even using the name _ apparently to play down the image of an organized opposition group operating on the country's soil.

In December, Jundallah claimed responsibility for kidnapping seven Iranian soldiers in the Zahedan region, threatening to kill them unless group members were freed from Iranian prisons. The seven were released a month later, apparently after negotiations through tribal mediators.

In March 2006, gunmen dressed as security forces killed 21 people on a highway outside Zahedan in an attack authorities blamed on "rebels," though Jundallah was never specified.

A group of the same name operated in Pakistan and was blamed for a series of attacks in the city of Karachi during 2004, most notably an attempt to assassinate the city's army corps commander. The general escaped but 10 others were killed.

A counterterrorism official in Karachi said Wednesday that the Pakistani group had about 20 members, who may have trained with al-Qaida near the Afghan border. Security agencies arrested its leaders and broke up the network and there were no signs it had operations in Iran, said the official, who spoke on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to talk to the media.

Drugs from the opium poppy fields of Afghanistan pass through southeast Iran, and over 3,000 Iranian troops have been killed in armed clashes with drug traffickers since 1979.