The photo above shows spectators on the official parade stand looking and pointing to the right, where the explosion took place a second before.
Immediately after the blast, Vahid Jalalzadeh, the provincial governor, told Mehr News by telephone that since the event had occurred only an hour earlier he had no exact figures on casualties or the manner in which the attack had occurred. He added, however, 'This incident was carried out by counter-revolutionaries in the women's section during the armed forces parade.' On this date, the regime's armed forces participate in annual ceremonies marking the start of the Iran-Iraq War in 1980.
Footage broadcast by IRIB's Channel 1 showed troops marching at the moment of the explosion -- though not the blast itself -- and the immediate aftermath.
According to General Nosrati, West Azerbaijan's military commander, the explosion took place among female spectators who had come to watch the parade. Jalalzadeh later added that two of the dead were the wives of senior military commanders.
Jalalzadeh told Fars News, close to the Revolutionary Guards, that the operation was a form of revenge exacted on the people. 'Last week, the ever-present people of Mahabad, through their spontaneous demonstration, condemned the insult to the sacred Koran,' he said in reference to a government-sponsored rally protesting a small US church's plans to burn the Koran. 'This bomb explosion shows that the enemy is enraged.' In the Channel 1 footage posted above, Jalalzadeh blamed the US and other foreign governments of being behind the terrorist attack, at least by virtue of their aid to Kurdish armed groups and the Mujahedin Khalgh Organization.
In line with Governor Jalalzadeh, other officials and pro-regime news sites have been quick to point the finger of blame on a broad spectrum of the usual, and sometimes contradictory, suspects.
Raja News, close to the Ahmadinejad government, quoted Deputy Governor Fakhrali Nikbakht as saying that the operation was a suicide attack. Raja based itself on a Fars News interview which did not make any such claim.
Fars News has been minimizing the news and does not feature it on its front page, although it has been attributing the attack to 'enemies of the Iranian people,' counter-revolutionaries, terrorists, and 'groupuscules.' Armed Kurdish groups, particularly Pejak, are active in the area, though, as far as this blog has been able to ascertain, they have never organized a bomb attack on civilians. Mahabad has a large Kurdish and Sunni population.
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