Rebels kill one in bus attack in southeast Iran

By Hossein Jaseb and Fredrik Dahl

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Rebels opened fire on a bus and killed one passenger on Tuesday in southeastern Iran, where police said they had arrested dozens of people after unrest there killed more than 30 in the past week.

The renewed violence occurred ahead of a presidential election on June 12 in which conservative President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who often rails against foreign threats to Iran's security, is pitted against moderates seeking detente with the West.

Two passengers were wounded in the attack on the bus west of the city of Zahedan, a police chief said. A suicide bomber killed 25 people in a Shi'ite mosque in Zahedan last Thursday and another six were killed in unrest there on Sunday.

Zahedan is the capital of Sistan-Baluchestan province, where most people are minority Sunni Muslims and ethnic Baluchis.

Close to Pakistan and Afghanistan, the region has seen frequent clashes between security forces and heavily armed drug smugglers, as well intermittent attacks by Sunni Baluchi rebels.

Deputy police commander Ahmad-Reza Radan said rebels set fire to a vehicle carrying natural gas on the same road near Zahedan but nobody was killed or wounded, the official IRNA news agency said, but it was not clear whether it was a separate incident to the attack on the bus.

STREET DISTURBANCES

Judiciary spokesman Alireza Jamshidi said between 20 and 30 people had been detained over street disturbances in Zahedan in which he said six people were killed this week. A police official said many more had been taken into custody.