TEHRAN (Reuters) – Security personnel defused a homemade bomb found on an aircraft during a domestic flight in Iran late yesterday, Iranian media said, two days after a mosque bombing killed 25 people in the country’s southeast.
The incident occurred less than two weeks before the Islamic Republic holds a presidential election in which the conservative incumbent, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, faces a challenge from reformers.
“The enemies want to create a security-threat environment before the country’s presidential election and to create hopelessness among people,” the official IRNA news agency quoted Mohammad Hassan Kazemi, a commander in the elite Revolutionary Guards in charge of aviation security, as saying. The semi-official Fars news agency said the device was defused after the Tehran-bound Kish Air aircraft with 131 passengers on board made an emergency landing in the southwestern city of Ahvaz.