Suicide bombing kills at least 27 Revolutionary Guard personnel in Iran

Jaish al Adl militant group claimed responsibility for the roadside bomb attack against Iran's revolutionary guards in which several others were also wounded.

A suicide bombing targeting a bus carrying personnel of Iran's elite paramilitary Revolutionary Guard force killed at least 27 people and wounded several more in the country's southeast, local media reported on Wednesday.

Jaish al Adl militant group claimed responsibility for the attack, which came on the day of a US-led conference in Warsaw that included discussions on what America describes as Iran's malign influence across the wider Middle East.

The state-run IRNA news agency, citing what it described as an "informed source," reported the attack on the Guard in Iran's Sistan and Baluchistan province.

The province, which lies on a major opium trafficking route, has seen occasional clashes between Iranian forces and Baluch separatists, as well as drug traffickers.

The Guard is a major economic and military power in Iran, answerable only to the country's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

While Iran has been enmeshed in the wars engulfing Syria and neighbouring Iraq, it largely has avoided the bloodshed plaguing the region. In 2009, more than 40 people, including six Guard commanders, were killed in a suicide attack in Sistan and Baluchistan province.

A coordinated June 7, 2017 Daesh group assault on 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.

And most recently, an attack on a military parade in September in Iran's oil-rich southwest killed over 20 and wounded over 60.