Bombs hit Govt targets in Iran oil town

TEHRAN - Four bombs exploded near state buildings in the southwestern Iranian oil town of Ahvaz yesterday, killing five people and wounding 89, an official said.

Gholamreza Shariati, deputy governor for Khuzestan province, of which Ahvaz is the capital, told Reuters women and children were among the casualties. He said the bombs had gone off within a two-hour period starting at about 9am local time.

State television quoted hospital officials as saying eight people had been killed, four of them women. Children were also among the dead. The hospital officials reported 30 wounded.

The bombs targeted the governor's office in the town, 550 km southwest of Tehran, as well as two local government departments and a housing complex for state media employees.

A pool of blood stained the floor of a waiting room at the governor's office, where the explosion wrecked ceilings, smashed windows and destroyed a car outside, TV footage showed.

"What they want is to endanger our security and harm the Islamic republic," said a bearded young man on state TV.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the co-ordinated attacks, which occurred just five days before Iran holds presidential elections.

The semi-official Mehr news agency quoted an unidentified security official as saying one of the bombs had exploded as a team was trying to defuse it. It gave no details.

Five people were killed in ethnic unrest in April in the partly Arabic-speaking province of Khuzestan, of which Ahvaz is the capital. Three hundred people were arrested.

The Popular Democratic Front of Ahvaz, which is campaigning for an independent Khuzestan, denied responsibility.

"We ... have no idea who has done this," said Mahmoud Ahmad, a London-based spokesman for the front told Reuters by telephone. "The tension has been there since April."

A former member of parliament for Ahvaz said he saw no link with the April unrest and blamed "foreign forces" for the bombs.

"Extremist movements in southern Iraq, which in the past have planned such blasts, could be among the first suspects," Mohammad Kianoushrad told Reuters, without identifying them.

- REUTERS