Attack on Iranian police convoy kills at least 10 officers; According to the authorities, no suspects have been identified

At least 10 officers were killed in an attack on an Iranian police convoy in the country’s restive southern province of Sistan and Baluchistan on Saturday, authorities said.

Details of the attack in Gohar Kuh, about 1,200 kilometers (745 miles) southeast of the Iranian capital Tehran, remain sparse.

At first, the reports simply described the attack by “miscreants” without further details. But soon after, Iranian state media reported 10 officers killed.

HalVash, a human rights group for the Baloch people of Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan, released photos and video of what appeared to be a malfunctioning truck painted with the green stripe used by Iranian police vehicles. One graphic photo released by the group showed what appeared to be the corpses of two police officers in the front seat of a truck.

HalVash said the attack targeted two security force vehicles and all their occupants were killed. It appeared that the truck was only damaged by bullets and not by the explosives used.

State news agency IRNA reported that Eskandar Momeni, the country’s interior minister, had ordered an investigation into the incident, which he said resulted in the “martyrdom of several policemen.”

Authorities have not identified any direct suspects in the attack, and no group has claimed responsibility. Later there was an attack Early Saturday morning, Israel launched a powerful attack on Iran.

Baloch regions in the three countries have been facing low-level Baloch nationalist insurgency for more than two decades. Verification of information remains difficult in Iran’s Sistan and Baluchistan, which has seen decades of violence involving heroin traffickers.

The province is one of the least developed parts of Iran. Relations between the region’s predominantly Sunni Muslim population and Iran’s Shiite theocracy have long been strained. Typical attacks include attacks by militants in the region, such as the Sunni militant group Jaish al-Adl, who kill several security personnel at a time.

However, there were mass casualty attacks militants in the past. In April, gunmen wearing explosive vests attacked several sites in the province, killing 10 people, before security forces shot dead 18 militants. In December last year, another attack left 11 dead and another eight wounded.

Meanwhile, the Taliban said they were investigating reports that Afghan migrants were killed by Iranian security forces in the region in early October, an incident that threatened to further sour relations between the nations.