Gunmen kill 6 people, including a local chief of the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, in Iran towns

TEHRAN, Iran (AP) — Unidentified gunmen killed six people in two separate attacks Tuesday in the same province in southern Iran, including a local chief of the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, state TV reported.

The head of a town council and two volunteer members of the Guard were also among the dead in the first attack, it said. It occurred after the victims participated in a school ceremony in Nikshahar town, about 1,350 kilometers (840 miles) southeast of the capital, Tehran, the report said.

It identified the town council chief as Parviz Kadkhodaei but provided no other details of the attack in the southeastern province of Sistan and Baluchistan.

Two police officers were killed in the second attack, which took place in Khash town in the same province, it said.

No one immediately took responsibility for the attacks.

In September, gunmen killed four border guards in the province in two separate attacks. The militant group Jaish al-Adl, which seeks greater rights for the ethnic Baluch minority, claimed responsibility for one the attacks, in which one officer and two soldiers in the border guard were killed.

The province, bordering Afghanistan and Pakistan, has been the site of occasional deadly clashes involving militant groups, drug smugglers and Iranian security forces. It is one of the least developed parts of Iran. Relations between the predominantly Sunni Muslim residents of the region and Iran’s Shiite theocracy have long been strained.