Armed men blow up gas tanker truck in northwestern Iran, killing policeman

A policeman has been killed and another seriously wounded after armed men blew up a tanker truck carrying liquified gas in northwestern Iran, Mehr news agency reported.

Police approached two men early on Wednesday at a petrol station in the town of Dareh Garm and the men began shooting at the tanker, the agency said.

There was a "horrific explosion" which blew out windows in nearby buildings, Colonel Seyed Ali Mirahmadi, the deputy police chief of Iran's northwestern Lorestan province, was quoted as saying.

The report gave no information about the identity of the attackers, or what happened to them.

Several members of Iran's security forces have been killed in recent clashes with armed groups on Iran’s eastern and western borders.

On Saturday, an armed attack in southeast Iran left a member of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guard dead and five others wounded, Iran's IRNA news agency reported, as the country held official celebrations on the 40th anniversary of its Islamic Revolution.

The assailants struck a base of the Basij militia in the town of Nikshahr.

The Jaish al-Adl (Army of Justice) group, which is blacklisted as a terrorist group by Iran, claimed responsibility for the raid on social media.

In one of the largest attacks, a military parade was attacked in September in the city of Ahvaz, killing at least 25 people. 

The Islamic State group and a separatist group from Iran's Arab minority both claimed responsibility for the Ahvaz attack.