A general view of the scene of a car bombing in front of a police station in the city of Chabahar, on Thursday, in southern Iran (AFP photo)

DUBA — At least two policemen died and 48 people were injured in a rare suicide car bomb attack by an extremist group on a police headquarters in the port city of Chabahar in southeast Iran on Thursday, state media reported. Four people were reportedly killed and 4 injured in a terrorist attack on Police headquarters in #Iran's southeastern city of #Chabahar: Acting Governor of #Sistan and #Baluchestan Province pic.twitter.com/sDY3ZUb31f — Tasnim News Agency (@Tasnimnews_EN) December 6, 2018

Images posted on Twitter purported to show thick smoke rising from the area. “Police stopped the explosive-laden car and started firing at the driver... who then set off the explosion near the police headquarters in Chabahar,” Chabahar’s acting governor Rahmdel Bameri told TV. The scene at the car bomb site in Chabahar, Iran (STR / Tasnim News / AFP)

That attack was claimed by the Sunni separatist group Jundullah (or Soldiers of God), which has claimed responsibility for bombings in the past. "Police stopped the explosive-laden car and started firing at the driver ... who then set off the explosion near the police headquarters in Chabahar," said Bameri.Suicide bombings are rare in Iran, but Sunni militant groups have carried out several attacks on Iranian security forces in the Sistan-Baluchestan province in recent years.Iran has stepped up security in border areas after gunmen in September opened fire on a military parade in Iran's southwestern city of Ahvaz, killing 25 people, almost half of them members of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards corps.An Iranian ethnic Arab separatist Sunni militant group and Islamic State both claimed responsibility for that attack.Last year, in the first deadly assault claimed by Islamic State in Tehran, 18 people were killed at the parliament and mausoleum of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, founder of the Islamic Republic.Jaish al-Adl (Army of Justice), a Sunni militant group that has carried out several attacks on Iranian security forces, mainly in Sistan-Baluchestan, claimed responsibility for an attack that killed 10 border guards near Pakistan in 2017.In 2010, two suicide bombers killed at least 28 people, including some of the elite Revolutionary Guards, at a Shi'ite mosque in southeast Iran, an attack Iranian leaders said was backed by the United States.The attack was claimed by a Sunni separatist group called Jundullah (Soldiers of God).Tehran accuses its Sunni-led regional rival Saudi Arabia and the United States of funding most of these groups, a charge that Riyadh and Washington deny.Iran also says that militant groups are sheltering across the border in Pakistan and has threatened to attack their bases if Islamabad does not confront them.Chabahar is a free trade zone and the site of an Indian-backed port complex being developed as part of a new transportation corridor for landlocked Afghanistan. A co-ordinated June 2017 Islamic State group attacon parliament and the shrine of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution, killed at least 18 people and wounded more than 50. TEHRAN: Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif accused “foreign-backed terrorists” for attacks Thursday in the port city of Chabahar that killed two people and wounded around 40 others. Chabahar is a free trade zone and the site of an Indian-backed port complex which is being developed as part of a new transportation corridor for land-locked Afghanistan.
A car bomb explodes near a police post in Chabahar, Iran. Two police officers are pronounced dead and around 40 people were wounded in the attack. Islamic militant group Ansar Al-Furqan claims responsibility. Iran accuses the perpetrators of being "foreign-backed terrorists".