A second wave of explosions rocked Zahedan as the funeral for 12 members of Revolutionary Guards was under way. Prior to the second wave of explosions, Sistan’s security officials announced the capture of the perpetrators of Wednesday morning’s explosions.

On midnight Saturday night, Zahedan Governor General Hassan-Ali Nouri told IRNA “This was a sound bomb which left no physical damage.” Nouri blamed the attack on “imperialist mercenaries who have been worried and unhappy by the massive and unprecedented presence of our people in the funeral of the martyrs of Zahedan’s terrorist attacks.” Nouri added that the explosion was a “blind and inhumane operation. After the event our officers quickly appeared on the scene and pursued the thugs.” Nouri said that the “thugs were dispersed.”

But Fars News Agency quoted the head of Sistan and Baluchistan’s Basij on the arrest of the perpetrators of Friday night’s explosion. Ali Molavi Haghighi told Fars that Wednesday and Friday’s explosions in Zahedan were “attempts to create an atmosphere of fear and terror in the province,” and added, “The terrorist group Jundallah, which has changed its name to the ‘National Resistance Movement of Iran,’ headed by Abdulmalek Rigi and helped by U.S. advisors, is activating foreign agents to portray Sistan and Baluchistan as unsafe.”

Sistan’s Basij commander believed that the second attacks were done in retaliation to “the screening of one of the thugs’ confessions on television.” Haghighi continued, “After the confessions went on air, the remainder of these terrorists, in a blind act, placed a sound bomb on the way of military and security convoys, so that they can assert their existence. A few suspects have been arrested so far.”

According to Sistan’s Basij commander, “120 tons of explosives” were confiscated in raids on team houses belonging to the terrorist group, Jondallah, operators. On Thursday, Sistan and Baluchistan’s local television channel, Hamoun, broadcasted the confessions of one of Wednesday’s alleged perpetrators. In the 2-minute long confessions, Nasrollah Shamsi Zahi introduced himself as a member of the “National Resistance Movement of Iran” [Jondallah], and said that he had stolen a car and murdered its driver for the operation. He said that he had joined Jondallah 45 days earlier and participated in the bombings for money.

Meanwhile, on its satellite television network, Jondallah broadcasted similar confessions taken from its hostages, who are members of the Revolutionary Guards and the local police force.

On Wednesday, local officials in Sistan and Baluchistan accused the United States and Britain of having a role in the attacks. Islamic Republic’s high officials are yet to react to the events of the past few days. In a trip to Pakistan a few days earlier, the commander of Iran’s police force asked his Pakistani colleagues to confront Jondallah.