Mehrestan: Afsaneh Aqila, a Basij women's commander, shot dead outside her home by gunmen

In the second armed attack on Wednesday, 14 October, in Mehrestan county in Sistan and Baluchestan, Afsaneh Aqila, commander of one of the county's women's Basij units, was shot at by gunmen outside her home and killed. The news came after DIAR's earlier report on the attack on a police vehicle in the same county.

HaalVsh, the Baluch human rights reporting group, confirmed her killing and said she was commander of the Mehrestan "Afzal" Basij unit and came from Zabol. Afsaneh Aqila had previously held workshops in Mehrestan promoting the hijab and teaching "enjoining the good and forbidding the wrong", programmes that are the Islamic Republic's tool for imposing compulsory hijab on women.

Name of the killed officer announced

The information centre of the Sistan and Baluchestan police command confirmed the killing of Senior Sergeant First Class Mohammad Ali Shahriari in the armed attack on a police vehicle in Mehrestan and said the search for and arrest of the attackers continues. According to HaalVsh, he too came from Zabol, and three other officers were wounded in the attack; the police have not announced the number of wounded.

The identity of the attackers and the motive for both attacks are still unclear, and as of publication no group has claimed responsibility for them.

Escalating armed clashes in the south-east

The two attacks follow a wave of armed clashes in Sistan and Baluchestan. On Tuesday, 13 October, more than 20 Fatemiyoun fighters were killed or wounded in the Taftan clash, a figure the Islamic Republic has not confirmed. On 9 October, Nosrat Eftekhari, the provincial police command's deputy for social affairs, was killed in a roadside bomb blast in Cheshmeh Ziyarat, Zahedan, and on 5 October two police officers died in an attack on a patrol on the Bampur road to Iranshahr.

HRANA has recorded at least 63 armed incidents with 94 dead in Sistan and Baluchestan and Kerman between 31 March and 10 October. This insecurity is the continuation of decades of security policy, discrimination and poverty imposed on fellow Baluch countrymen, to which the Islamic Republic has responded only with military force and executions.

The killing of a Basij women's commander and a police officer on the same day in Mehrestan points to the spread of armed clashes in Sistan and Baluchestan.