There was pandemonium in Iran on Sunday as some yet-to-be-identified Gunmen shot dead a member of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards in the east of the capital Tehran, state news agency IRNA has confirmed.
‘Sayyad Khodai… was assassinated during a gun attack carried out by two motorcyclists in Tehran’s Mohahedin-e Eslam Street,’ IRNA said in a broadcast that was monitored by Africa Today News, New York.
In the broadcast, the agency described him as a ‘defender of the sanctuary’ — a term used to describe anyone who works on behalf of the Islamic republic in Syria or Iraq.
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The Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, the ideological arm of Iran’s military, identified Khodai as a colonel.
In a statement posted on their website, the Guards also denounced a ‘terrorist act’ they claimed was carried out by “elements linked to global arrogance” — a reference to the United States and its allies.
The Guards said they launched an investigation to identify the ‘aggressor or aggressors’.
According to IRNA, Khodai was killed by five bullets as he returned home at around 4:00 pm (1130 GMT).
The agency went on to publish pictures showing a man slumped over in the driver’s seat of a car, with blood around the collar of his blue shirt and on his right upper arm.
He is strapped in with his seat belt and the front window on the passenger side has been shot out.
In a related development, gunmen yesterday kidnapped an Italian couple and their child as well as a Togolese national in southeastern Mali, a local official and a Malian security source have confirmed.
According to the source, the abduction occurred late Friday about 100 kilometres (60 miles) from the border with Burkina Faso, part of a west African region hit by turmoil, kidnappings as well as conflicts which has been often blamed on armed jihadists.
‘Armed men in a vehicle kidnapped three Italians and a Togolese about 10 kilometres (six miles) from Koutiala,’ late Friday, according to an official from the Koutiala region who asked not to be named.
He said the victims were two Italian adults and their child as well as a Togolese, adding they were all Jehovah’s Witnesses.