Tehran, Dec 17 (EFE).- Iran’s Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi blamed Israel for the attack on a police station that killed 11 officers in the south of the country, Iranian state media reported.

Vahidi said that the terrorists who carried out the recent attack in Rask in southeast Iran were supported by the Israeli regime, the official IRNA agency reported late Saturday.

A group of armed men attacked a police station in Rask, located in the restive Sistan-Balochistan province, in the early hours of Friday.

A total of 11 police officers were killed and six others were injured in the attack.

Two of the attackers were also killed, while another was arrested.

Sunni group Jaish al-Adl, which opposes the Shiite regime in Tehran, claimed the attack in a statement, according to the state media.

One day after the attack, the Iranian authorities executed a prisoner convicted of spying for Israel’s Mossad intelligence service in Sistan-Balochistan, a province that has a predominantly Sunni population.

Extremist Sunni groups opposed to the Shiite government in Tehran operate in the province along with gangs of smugglers and drug traffickers.

A trial began last week against Swedish European Union official Johan Floderus on charges of spying for the Mossad, which could carry the death penalty.

Iran and Israel are bitter rivals. They pose a mutual existential threat, compete for regional hegemony, and maintain a covert war with cyberattacks, assassinations, and sabotage.

Tehran praised the Hamas attack on Israeli territory on Oct. 7, which caused 1,200 deaths and led Israel to declare war on the Palestinian militant group.

Since then, it has repeatedly warned of the possibility of other fronts opening if Israel does not stop its retaliatory bombings of Gaza, in which more than 18,000 Palestinians have been killed, according to Gazan authorities. EFE

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