Iran honors Guards killed in attack, blames U.S.

By Fredrik Dahl and Hashem Kalantari

TEHRAN (Reuters) - Iran's military accused the United States and Israel of terrorism as it held a funeral on Tuesday for high-ranking commanders killed in the deadliest attack in the Islamic Republic since the 1980s.

Throngs of uniformed mourners carried the flag-draped coffins of the deputy head of the Revolutionary Guards' ground forces, General Nourali Shoushtari, and other officers blown up by a suicide bomber in volatile southeastern Iran on Sunday.

In another sign of growing instability in the region near Pakistan, Iran's Mehr News Agency said gunmen shot dead two policemen late on Monday in a city in the same province, Sistan-Baluchestan, where the previous day's attack took place.

It was not immediately clear whether the attacks were linked.

Fifteen Guards members were among the 42 people killed in Sunday's bombing, including six senior commanders, Iranian media said. Tribal chiefs and other civilians also died.

"The martyrdom of commander Shoushtari added a black page to the U.S. and Israeli terrorist file," said armed forces head Major General Hassan Firouzabadi, quoted by IRNA news agency.

A Sunni rebel group, Jundollah (God's soldiers), has claimed responsibility for the attack in the poverty-stricken province of Sistan-Baluchestan bordering Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Iran, mainly Shi'ite Muslim, says Jundollah is backed by the United States and Britain and has suggested it also has ties with majority Sunni Pakistan.

London, Washington and Islamabad have denied involvement. Tehran has often accused its Western foes of seeking to destabilize sensitive border areas.

THREE DETAINED

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

The head of the Sistan-Baluchestan judiciary, Ebrahim Hamidi, said the suicide bomber had been identified and he was from the province. "The elements behind the terrorist attack will be arrested soon," Fars News Agency quoted him as saying.

Iran's state Press TV said three people had been detained over the bombing but gave no details.

Sunday's attack, the deadliest such incident in Iran since its 1980-88 war with Iraq, took place a day before talks started between Iranian and Western officials in Vienna aimed at allaying concern about Iran's nuclear ambitions.

Thousands of people, many of them military men, attended the funeral ceremony at a Guards base in Tehran, holding pictures of the victims and of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.