5 Security Officers in Iran Killed in Clashes with Dervishes
- 6 years ago
5 Security Officers in Iran Killed in Clashes with Dervishes
20, 2018
TEHRAN — Three Iranian police officers and two paramilitary troops were killed overnight during clashes with members of a Sufi Islam order in Tehran, Iranian news
outlets reported on Tuesday, the most casualties the security forces have suffered in one evening since the height of antigovernment demonstrations in 2009.
State news media reported that the police arrested more than 300 protesters, most of them members of the Gonabadi dervishes, a mystical Sufi strain of Islam
that the clerical government has designated a challenge to mainstream Shiite theology.
The clashes were also captured on a murky video spread on social media
and broadcast by the semiofficial Fars news agency, which has links to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
One member of the Basij, the voluntary paramilitary security forces under the command of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, was run over
and killed in a separate attack, while another was stabbed to death.
The search and rescue effort was expected to take some time, Brig.-Gen. Kiumars Heydari, the commander of the Iranian Army’s ground forces, told state television,
because helicopters could not land on the steep and forbidding terrain.
Later in the evening, one protester drove a bus into a group of riot police officers
who had gathered in northern Tehran, killing three and wounding others.
20, 2018
TEHRAN — Three Iranian police officers and two paramilitary troops were killed overnight during clashes with members of a Sufi Islam order in Tehran, Iranian news
outlets reported on Tuesday, the most casualties the security forces have suffered in one evening since the height of antigovernment demonstrations in 2009.
State news media reported that the police arrested more than 300 protesters, most of them members of the Gonabadi dervishes, a mystical Sufi strain of Islam
that the clerical government has designated a challenge to mainstream Shiite theology.
The clashes were also captured on a murky video spread on social media
and broadcast by the semiofficial Fars news agency, which has links to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
One member of the Basij, the voluntary paramilitary security forces under the command of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, was run over
and killed in a separate attack, while another was stabbed to death.
The search and rescue effort was expected to take some time, Brig.-Gen. Kiumars Heydari, the commander of the Iranian Army’s ground forces, told state television,
because helicopters could not land on the steep and forbidding terrain.
Later in the evening, one protester drove a bus into a group of riot police officers
who had gathered in northern Tehran, killing three and wounding others.