DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran said Tuesday it executed nine militants of the Islamic State group detained after a 2018 attack.
The Iranian judiciary’s Mizan news agency announced the executions Tuesday, saying that the death sentences had been upheld by the country’s top court.
It described the militants as being detained after they were in a clash in the country's western region with Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, in which three troops and several Islamic State group fighters were killed. Authorities said they had seized a cache of combat weapons, including a machine gun and 50 grenades, after surrounding the militants' hideout in the country’s west.
Iran carries out executions by hanging.
The extremist group, which once held vast territory across Iraq and Syria in a self-described caliphate it declared in 2014, ultimately was beaten back by U.S.-led forces.
It has been in disarray in the years since, though it has mounted major assaults. In neighboring Afghanistan, for instance, the Islamic State group is believed to have grown in strength since the fall of the Western-backed government there to the Taliban in 2021.
The group previously claimed a June 2017 attack in Tehran on parliament and a mausoleum of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini that killed at least 18 people and wounded more than 50. It has claimed other attacks as well in Iran, including two suicide bombings in 2024 targeting a commemoration for an Iranian general slain in a 2020 U.S. drone strike. That assault killed at least 94 people.
Gabe Levin, The Associated Press
