Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) announced it has killed the mastermind behind the attack on a military parade in the southwestern Iranian city of Ahvaz last month that left 24 people martyred.
The IRGC said in a statement published on state media on Tuesday that allied forces in Iraq killed a man identified as Abu Zaha, “the mastermind of the recent terrorist crime in Ahvaz,” along with four other militants.
Iranian state television’s website said Abu Zaha was a member of the ISIL Takfiri group.
The five were killed “during a reconnaissance and surprise operation by forces of the resistance this morning in Iraq’s Diyalah Province,” northeast of Baghdad, the statement said.
On September 22, gunmen dressed in military uniforms opened fire during a parade marking the start of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War in an attack that killed 24 Iranians, about half of them IRGC members, and left all the attackers dead.
On October 1, Iran said it had killed several ISIL leaders in eastern Syria in a missile strike and destroyed the militants’ supplies and infrastructure.
Supreme Leader of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, Imam Sayyed Ali Khamenei said that those responsible for the parade attack were paid by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, vowing that Iran will “severely punish” those behind the violence.
Source: Agencies
