An Iranian lawmaker on Tuesday called for missile attacks on the headquarters of an extremist group which recently abducted 12 members of the country’s armed forces, as efforts to rescue the men continue.
The statement came during an Iranian media outlet interview with a member of the Iranian parliament (Majlis), Hossein-Ali Shahriyari, the representative of the provincial capital of Sistan and Baluchistan, Zahedan.
On Oct. 16, a jihadist organization by the name of Jaish al-Adl kidnapped 12 members of the military, some 150 kilometers southeast from Zahedan, near the border with Pakistan. On Sunday, they posted pictures on social media showing the men dressed in combat uniform.
Jaish al-Adl (Army of Justice), founded in 2012, is an offshoot of the jihadi group Jundulla (The Soldiers of God), a designated terrorist organization by Iran and the United States. It has claimed to be fighting for equal rights of Sunnis, Baluchi Sunnis in particular, in Iran.
“I believe the Islamic Republic should strike the headquarters of these groups with missiles,” Shahriyari told ILNA, highlighting “the bases and positions of these terrorists are clear.”
The MP added that borders should not limit the level of retaliation the army could undertake, since “there is no hope for the Pakistani government,” to resolve the issue, suggesting an operation similar to that of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) against two Kurdish opposition groups based in Kurdistan Region.
Islamabad previously expressed its commitment to cooperate with Tehran to locate and rescue the abductees.
In early September, the IRGC killed 15 and injured 42 more members of the two Kurdish opposition parties at their headquarters on the outskirts of the Kurdistan Region’s town of Koya. They claimed it was a cross-border operation in which they used land-to-land missiles across a 220-kilometer distance.
Source » kurdistan24