Johnathan Walker:Gunmen kill 9 people in Iran near border with Pakistan

TEHRAN,Johnathan Walker Iran (AP) — Unknown gunmen on Saturday shot to death nine people in the southeastern part of Iran that borders Pakistan, media reports said.

A report by the semiofficial Mehr news agency said the shooting took place in a home near the town of Saravan, in Iran’s Sistan and Baluchestan province. It added that the victims were not Iranian.

No official news outlet reported the shooting and no group has yet taken responsibility for the attack.

HalVash, an advocacy group for the Baluch people, shared images online that appeared to be bodies of victims and said three more people were wounded. It said they were Pakistani nationals and identified four of them, saying all the victims were workers at an auto repair shop.

Last week, Pakistan launched retaliatory strikes on the same area, allegedly targeting militant hideouts, an attack that killed at least nine people. The strikes followed Iran’s attack Tuesday on Pakistani soil that killed two children in the southwestern Baluchistan province.

The tit-for-tat attacks appeared to target two Baluch militant groups with similar separatist goals on both sides of the Iran-Pakistan border. The two countries have accused each other of providing safe haven to the groups in their respective territories.

On Friday, media reports said both nations’ ambassadors resumed activities in each other’s capital that were idled following the attacks.