Bomb defused in Iranian plane toilet

IRANIAN security officials defused a bomb planted on a plane carrying 131 passengers, officials said yesterday, the latest incident of violence ahead of next month’s presidential election.

The attempted attack occurred on a Kish Air flight headed to Tehran from the oil-rich western city of Ahvaz near the border with Iraq, the Fars news agency reported.

The incident occurred just two days after 25 people were killed in a bomb attack on a mosque in Zahedan in south-eastern Iran claimed by a shadowy Sunni rebel group.

“Security officials of the Islamic Republic Revolutionary Guards acted well and the incident caused no casualties,” Reza Jafarzadeh, spokesman for Iran’s Civil Aviation Organisation, said.

A top security official blamed Iran’s “enemies” for the plane bomb, saying they wanted to stoke tensions ahead of the election. “The suspicious package and the details of the sabotage operation in the Tehran-Ahvaz Boeing is under investigation,” Mohammad Hassan Kazemi, the head of the Revolutionary Guards aviation security operations, said.