12 die in bombing at Iranian military parade

— TEHRAN, Iran - A bomb exploded at a military parade in northwestern Iran on Wednesday, killing 12 spectators in an attack that one official blamed on Kurdish separatists who have fought Iranian forces in the area for decades.

The blast in the city of Mahabad, close to the borders with Iraq and Turkey, also wounded 75 people, Iranian media reports said. Most of the victims were women and children, said provincial Gov. Vahid Jalalzadeh.

Iranian forces in the border zone have clashed for years with Kurdish rebels from the Iranian wing of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party, which also has fighters based in Turkey and Iraq. The group in Iran has generally not targeted civilians in its campaign for greater rights for Kurds, raising the prospect that the bomb might have gone off prematurely.

A state radio report said the device was detonated on a timer and had been placed under a bush near the parade route. There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

But Jalalzadeh told state TV the explosion was carried out by “counterrevolutionaries,” a reference to the Kurdish separatist group. He called the bombing “a terrorist incident” and claimed it had the backing of foreign governments.

“This move has a foreign root. The U.S. and its allies are present in the region,” he said.

Iranian officials have frequently accused the U.S., Britain and other Western powers of stoking disorder in the country, including the unrest that swept Iran after President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s disputed re-election in June 2009.

State TV broadcast a short segment of video capturing the moment the blast shook the parade. It showed soldiers marching in front of a stage for VIPs as the sound of the explosion rang out. The area was left littered with debris and bits of torn clothing.

The head of Iran’s Emergency Department, Gholamreza Masoumi, put the death toll at 12.

Iran’s official IRNA news agency, citing hospital officials, said all of the dead were female, while the Mehr news agency said two of the victims were wives of ranking military officers. State TV said two of the dead were young children.

The parade was one of several held around the country to mark the 30th anniversary of the start of the Iran-Iraq war.

Meanwhile, the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council and Germany have offered Iran another chance to enter negotiations over its suspect nuclear program.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton and the foreign ministers of Britain, China, France, Germany and Russia met Wednesday. They urged Iran to come to the table for a new round of talks, and said it remained essential for Iran to prove its nuclear program is peaceful.

In other developments, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev issued a decree Wednesday banning all sales of S-300 anti-aircraft missile systems to Iran.

Information for this article was contributed by David Stringer and Matthew Lee of The Associated Press.

Front Section, Pages 5 on 09/23/2010

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