By Mustafa Melih Ahishali
TEHRAN, Iran (AA): Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps accused Saudi Arabia and the United States of being responsible for Wednesday’s deadly terrorist attacks on the parliament building and Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini shrine.
“The world public, especially Iran, finds this terrorist attack — which happened a week after the meeting of the U.S. president with the head of one of the region’s backward governments supporting fundamentalist terrorists — as meaningful,” the corps said in a statement on their official website Sepahnews.
The statement refers to U.S. President Donald Trump’s May 21 visit to Saudi Arabia.
The Guard Corps also confirmed that Daesh claimed responsibility for the attack, and it vowed revenge.
Later on Wednesday, five suspects were arrested in Tehran, Iranian Student’s News Agency ISNA reported quoting head of Tehran Police Department.
“Five suspects were arrested by the police after the attack in the mausoleum of Ayatollah Khomeini,” Hossein Sajedinia said.
Saudi Foreign Minister Adel al-Jubeir said Iran must be punished for what he claimed as interference in the region and support for terrorist organizations, al-Arabiya news channel reported him as saying early Wednesday just hours before the two terrorist attacks in Tehran which claimed the lives of several people, reported Fars News Agency
– 12 dead, dozens injured
Gunmen in Tehran opened fire inside Iran’s parliament building and near a shrine devoted to Ayatollah Khomeini, killing at least 12 people and injuring another 43, according to Iranian officials.
The semi-official Tasnim news agency has since reported that security forces neutralized all the assailants. Four gunmen were involved in the attack on parliament, the IRNA news agency reported, citing Iranian lawmaker Qolam-Ali Jafarzadeh Imenabadi.
Three guards were reportedly injured when the attackers, armed with Kalashnikov assault rifles and a handgun, opened fire inside the assembly building.
Imenabadi was quoted as saying that at least one guard had been killed in the ensuing exchange of fire.
The Fars News Agency, meanwhile, reported that five people had been killed — and at least 10 injured — in the parliament attack.
The attackers also took four people hostage on the upper floors of the parliament building, Tasnim reported.
The news agency, which put the death toll from the parliament attack at seven, also published an image of an alleged attacker displaying a hostage from a window.
[Photo:A police helicopter at the Ayatullah Khumayni shrine as Daesh gunmen attack the shrine in the capital Tehran, Iran on June 7, 2017. Photographer: Hasan Shirvani/ Anadolu Agency]
-Shrine attack
In a simultaneous attack to the south of Tehran, four attackers opened fire at a shrine dedicated to Ayatollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic republic, Fars reported.
According to that news agency, one person was killed and several more wounded in a bomb and gun attack.
Fars reported that three attackers had opened fire on visitors at the shrine, while a fourth blew himself up outside a police station across from the site.
The same news agency added that one attacker had committed suicide by swallowing a cyanide pill, while a female terrorist had been captured by the authorities.
Ali Khalili, an official at the shrine, told IRNA that an “armed man” had blown himself up outside the mausoleum.
[Photo: A police officer rescues a child from the window during terrorist attack in the parliament building in the capital Tehran, Iran on June 7, 2017. Photo Muhabiri Omid Vahabzadeh/AA]
