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Soldiers killed by blast at Iranian military base

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An explosion at an Iranian military training base that was apparently triggered when a munitions cache caught fire by accident killed and injured several servicemen on Tuesday, Iranian news agencies reported.

An Iranian official quoted by the Fars news agency said bodies were still being identified and the exact number of those killed would not be announced until Wednesday.

The explosion at a base in Khoramabad, western Iran, occured roughly three weeks after a deadly bomb attack on a military parade in northwestern Iran and only days after gunmen killed several police officers in the capital of Iran’s Kurdistan province.

Analysts have said the killings could raise pressure on President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, whose government has been plagued by infighting and economic woes linked in part to foreign sanctions imposed over Iran’s disputed nuclear programme.

Iran’s official IRNA news agency said Tuesday’s blast had happened after “a place where ammunition was kept” caught fire. The website of Iran’s English-language Press TV reported the explosion had been caused “by accident”.

Press TV said firefighters and rescue teams were sent to the scene and the injured were rushed to hospital.

The blast at the parade in late September killed 12 people and injured 80 in the city of Mahabad.

Iranian authorities blamed that attack on “anti-revolutionary” militants backed by foreign enemies. Days after it took place, Iran’s elite Revolutionary Guards said they had killed about 30 people who were behind it.

No group claimed responsibility for the blast in Mahabad, which occurred during an annual ceremony for the Iranian armed forces to commemorate Iran’s 8-year war with Iraq in the 1980s.

But several armed groups hostile to the establishment are active in Iran, including Kurdish separatists in the northwest, Baluch militants in the southeast and some Arabs in the southwest.

The Sunni Muslim Jundollah militant group, which Iran says has links to al Qaeda, is the most active. it claimed a double suicide attack on July 15 which killed 28 people, including Revolutionary Guards.

Last week, five Iranians, including four members of the security forces, were killed and nine injured when gunmen opened fire on a police patrol in Iran’s Kurdistan province, the scene of frequent clashes between Kurdish guerrillas and Iranian forces. Alertnet

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3 responses to “Soldiers killed by blast at Iranian military base”

  1. ghaddad Avatar
    ghaddad

    This is from Debka source and your guess to believe it as much as I do:

    A top-secret Iranian military installation was struck by a triple blast Tues. Oct. 12 the day before Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arrived in Lebanon. debkafile’s military and intelligence sources report the site held most of the Shehab-3 medium-range missile launchers Iran had stocked for striking US forces in Iraq and Israel in the event of war – some set to deliver triple warheads (tri-conic nosecones).

    The 18 soldiers officially reported killed in the blasts and 14 injured belonged to the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) main missile arm, the Al-Hadid Brigades.
    The Imam Ali Base where the explosion occurred is situated in lofty Zagros mountain country near the town of Khorramabad in the western Iranian province of Lorestan. This site was selected for an altitude which eases precise targeting and the difficulty of reaching it for air or ground attack. It lies 400 kilometers from Baghdad and primary American bases in central Iraq and 1,250 kilometers from Tel Aviv and central Israel. Both are well within the Shehab-3 missile’s 1,800-2,500-kilometer operational range.

    Our Iranian sources report that Tehran spent hundreds of millions to build one of the largest subterranean missile launching facilities of its kind in the Middle East or Europe. Burrowed under the Imam Ali Base is a whole network of wide tunnels deep underground. Somehow, a mysterious hand rigged three blasts in quick succession deep inside those tunnels, destroying a large number of launchers and causing enough damage to render the facility unfit for use.
    In its official statement on the incident, Tehran denied it was the result of “a terrorist attack” and claimed the explosion “was caused by a nearby fire that spread to the munitions storage area of the base.” In the same way, the regime went to great lengths to cover up the ravages wrought to their nuclear and military control systems by the Stuxnet virus – which is still at work.
    In actual fact, debkafile’s military sources report, Iran’s missile arsenal and the Revolutionary Guards have also suffered a devastating blow. Worst of all, all their experts are a loss to account for the assailants’ ability to penetrate one of Iran’s most closely guarded bases and reach deep underground to blow up the missile launchers.

    The number of casualties is believed to be greater than the figure given out by Tehran.

    The soldiers’ funerals took place Thursday, Oct. 14, as the same time as Ahmadinejad declared in South Lebanon that Israel was destined to “disappear.” A few later, he ended his contentious two-day visit to Lebanon.

    This week, Aviation Week discovered that the new intermediate-range BM-25 Musudan ballistic missile exhibited at the North Korean military parade Sunday Oct. 10 – at which Kim Jong-II also paraded his son and heir – bore a strong resemblance to the Iranian Shehab-3.

    It is therefore possible that the explosions at the IRGC base in Lorestan Tuesday also sabotaged secret models of the Iran’s latest road-mobile, liquid-fuel version of the Shehab-3 ballistic missile.

  2. ghaddad Avatar
    ghaddad

    This is from Debka source and your guess to believe it as much as I do:

    A top-secret Iranian military installation was struck by a triple blast Tues. Oct. 12 the day before Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arrived in Lebanon. debkafile’s military and intelligence sources report the site held most of the Shehab-3 medium-range missile launchers Iran had stocked for striking US forces in Iraq and Israel in the event of war – some set to deliver triple warheads (tri-conic nosecones).

    The 18 soldiers officially reported killed in the blasts and 14 injured belonged to the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) main missile arm, the Al-Hadid Brigades.
    The Imam Ali Base where the explosion occurred is situated in lofty Zagros mountain country near the town of Khorramabad in the western Iranian province of Lorestan. This site was selected for an altitude which eases precise targeting and the difficulty of reaching it for air or ground attack. It lies 400 kilometers from Baghdad and primary American bases in central Iraq and 1,250 kilometers from Tel Aviv and central Israel. Both are well within the Shehab-3 missile’s 1,800-2,500-kilometer operational range.

    Our Iranian sources report that Tehran spent hundreds of millions to build one of the largest subterranean missile launching facilities of its kind in the Middle East or Europe. Burrowed under the Imam Ali Base is a whole network of wide tunnels deep underground. Somehow, a mysterious hand rigged three blasts in quick succession deep inside those tunnels, destroying a large number of launchers and causing enough damage to render the facility unfit for use.
    In its official statement on the incident, Tehran denied it was the result of “a terrorist attack” and claimed the explosion “was caused by a nearby fire that spread to the munitions storage area of the base.” In the same way, the regime went to great lengths to cover up the ravages wrought to their nuclear and military control systems by the Stuxnet virus – which is still at work.
    In actual fact, debkafile’s military sources report, Iran’s missile arsenal and the Revolutionary Guards have also suffered a devastating blow. Worst of all, all their experts are a loss to account for the assailants’ ability to penetrate one of Iran’s most closely guarded bases and reach deep underground to blow up the missile launchers.

    The number of casualties is believed to be greater than the figure given out by Tehran.

    The soldiers’ funerals took place Thursday, Oct. 14, as the same time as Ahmadinejad declared in South Lebanon that Israel was destined to “disappear.” A few later, he ended his contentious two-day visit to Lebanon.

    This week, Aviation Week discovered that the new intermediate-range BM-25 Musudan ballistic missile exhibited at the North Korean military parade Sunday Oct. 10 – at which Kim Jong-II also paraded his son and heir – bore a strong resemblance to the Iranian Shehab-3.

    It is therefore possible that the explosions at the IRGC base in Lorestan Tuesday also sabotaged secret models of the Iran’s latest road-mobile, liquid-fuel version of the Shehab-3 ballistic missile.

  3. Avatar
    Anonymous

    This is from Debka source and your guess to believe it as much as I do:

    A top-secret Iranian military installation was struck by a triple blast Tues. Oct. 12 the day before Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arrived in Lebanon. debkafile’s military and intelligence sources report the site held most of the Shehab-3 medium-range missile launchers Iran had stocked for striking US forces in Iraq and Israel in the event of war – some set to deliver triple warheads (tri-conic nosecones).

    The 18 soldiers officially reported killed in the blasts and 14 injured belonged to the Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) main missile arm, the Al-Hadid Brigades.
    The Imam Ali Base where the explosion occurred is situated in lofty Zagros mountain country near the town of Khorramabad in the western Iranian province of Lorestan. This site was selected for an altitude which eases precise targeting and the difficulty of reaching it for air or ground attack. It lies 400 kilometers from Baghdad and primary American bases in central Iraq and 1,250 kilometers from Tel Aviv and central Israel. Both are well within the Shehab-3 missile’s 1,800-2,500-kilometer operational range.

    Our Iranian sources report that Tehran spent hundreds of millions to build one of the largest subterranean missile launching facilities of its kind in the Middle East or Europe. Burrowed under the Imam Ali Base is a whole network of wide tunnels deep underground. Somehow, a mysterious hand rigged three blasts in quick succession deep inside those tunnels, destroying a large number of launchers and causing enough damage to render the facility unfit for use.
    In its official statement on the incident, Tehran denied it was the result of “a terrorist attack” and claimed the explosion “was caused by a nearby fire that spread to the munitions storage area of the base.” In the same way, the regime went to great lengths to cover up the ravages wrought to their nuclear and military control systems by the Stuxnet virus – which is still at work.
    In actual fact, debkafile’s military sources report, Iran’s missile arsenal and the Revolutionary Guards have also suffered a devastating blow. Worst of all, all their experts are a loss to account for the assailants’ ability to penetrate one of Iran’s most closely guarded bases and reach deep underground to blow up the missile launchers.

    The number of casualties is believed to be greater than the figure given out by Tehran.

    The soldiers’ funerals took place Thursday, Oct. 14, as the same time as Ahmadinejad declared in South Lebanon that Israel was destined to “disappear.” A few later, he ended his contentious two-day visit to Lebanon.

    This week, Aviation Week discovered that the new intermediate-range BM-25 Musudan ballistic missile exhibited at the North Korean military parade Sunday Oct. 10 – at which Kim Jong-II also paraded his son and heir – bore a strong resemblance to the Iranian Shehab-3.

    It is therefore possible that the explosions at the IRGC base in Lorestan Tuesday also sabotaged secret models of the Iran’s latest road-mobile, liquid-fuel version of the Shehab-3 ballistic missile.

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