Iran hangs member of Sunni rebel group: report

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran has executed a member of the Jundollah Sunni rebel group, which has been blamed for a series of attacks including one last month that killed 40 people, the semi-official Fars news agency reported Tuesday.

"Abdolhamid Rigi ... was hanged inside a prison in the southeastern city of Zahedan Monday," Fars quoted senior police official Gholamali Nekoui as saying.

Rigi had been convicted of various charges, including moharebe or staging war against God, punishable by death sentence under Iran's Islamic law.

Nekoui said the man was not a brother of Jundollah leader Abdolmalek Rigi, whose brother's execution was postponed in July when 13 other members of the ethnic Baluch Sunni group were hanged for being involved in fatal bombings in the area.

Jundollah (God's soldiers), which accuses the government of discrimination against Sunnis, has been blamed for many deadly incidents over the last few years. Iranian media reported that it had claimed responsibility for the bombing of a mosque in Sistan-Baluchestan in May that killed 25 people.

It also said it had staged an attack on October 18 in Iran's impoverished Sistan-Baluchestan province that killed more than 40 Iranians, including 15 members of the elite Revolutionary Guards. Tribal chiefs and other civilians also died in the deadliest such incident in Iran since the 1980s.

Many minority Sunnis live in the desert area, which has seen an increase in bombings and clashes between security forces, ethnic Baluch Sunni insurgents and drug traffickers.

Iran, a predominantly Shi'ite Muslim country with Sunni minorities, has accused Pakistan, Britain and the United States of backing the Sunni rebel group. London, Washington and Islamabad all denied involvement in the attack last month.

Iran rejects allegations by Western rights groups that it discriminates against ethnic and religious minorities

(Editing by David Stamp)

(Tehran newsroom, +98 21 8820 8770)