Iran’s Khamenei vows revenge after deadly attack on Shi’ite pilgrims

DUBAI, Oct 27 (Reuters) – Iran’s supreme Leader vowed on Thursday to retaliate against those threatening the country’s security after the massacre of Shi’ite pilgrims, an assault claimed by Islamic State which threatens to inflame tensions amid widespread anti-government protests.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said the assailants “will surely be punished” and called on Iranians to unite. “We all have a duty to deal with the enemy and its traitorous or ignorant agents,” he said in a statement read on state television a day after the attack killed 15 people.

Khamenei’s call for unity appeared to be directed at mostly government loyalists and not protesters whose nearly six-week-old movement is seen by authorities as a threat to national security.

Iran’s clerical rulers have faced nationwide demonstrations since the death in police custody of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Kurdish woman, on Sept. 16.

Iranians have called for the death of Khamenei and an end to the Islamic Republic during the protests, which have become one of the boldest challenges to the clerical leadership since the 1979 revolution, drawing many Iranians on to the streets.

Officials said they had arrested a gunman who carried out the attack at the Shah Cheragh shrine in the city of Shiraz. State media blamed “takfiri terrorists” – a label that predominantly Shi’ite Iran uses for hardline Sunni Muslim militants such as Islamic State.

A senior official said the suspected attacker was in critical condition after being shot by police.

“We have not been able to interrogate him yet,” said deputy provincial governor Easmail Mohebipour, quoted by the semi-official Tasnim news agency.

CCTV footage broadcast on state TV on Thursday showed the attacker entering the shrine after hiding an assault rifle in a bag and shooting as worshippers tried to flee and hide in corridors.

Islamic State, which once posed a security threat across the Middle East, has claimed previous violence in Iran, including deadly twin attacks in 2017 that targeted parliament and the tomb of the Islamic Republic’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

Since the peak of its power, when it ruled millions of people in the Middle East and struck fear across the world with deadly bombings and shootings, Islamic State has slipped back into the shadows.

Iran often accuses the West and its regional rivals Israel and Saudi Arabia of fomenting attacks. Saudi Arabia denies this and Israel usually declines to comment on its moves against the Islamic Republic.

Wednesday’s killing of Shi’ite pilgrims came on the same day that Iranian security forces clashed with increasingly strident protesters marking 40 days since Amini’s death.

Iranian leaders may have hoped that the shrine attack would draw attention away from the unrest but there is no sign that is happening.

The official news agency IRNA said protesters angry over the “suspect” death of a demonstrator broke windows of banks, a tax office and other public buildings in the northwestern city of Mahabad.

The Kurdish human rights group Hengaw said security forces killed at least five people during protests on Thursday in the northwest of the country, where many Kurds live. Three were killed in the…