An Iranian man holds a placard denouncing the USA, Israel and Saudi Arabia during a mass funeral for the victims of those killed during an attack on a military parade on the weekend, in the southwestern Iranian city of Ahvaz on September 24, 2018. (AFP PHOTO / ATTA KENARE)
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — Riyadh rejected accusations by Tehran that Saudi Arabia was behind last week’s deadly attack on a military parade in the southwestern Iranian city of Ahvaz, state media reported Tuesday.
“The kingdom completely rejects the deplorable false accusations by Iranian officials regarding the kingdom’s support for the incidents that occurred in Iran,” a foreign ministry official said, quoted by the Saudi Press Agency.
“The kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s policy is clear regarding its non-interference in the domestic affairs of other countries,” he said.
On Monday, Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei charged that gunmen who killed 24 people at the military parade were funded by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
UAE’s minister of state for foreign affairs, Anwar Gargash, has also dismissed Iran’s accusation as “baseless.”
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“This official campaign launched in Iran against the UAE is regrettable and has escalated since the Ahvaz attack,” Gargash tweeted earlier this week.
Father of Mohammad Taha Eghadami, a 4-year-old boy who was killed in Saturday’s terror attack on a military parade, mourns over his coffin during a mass funeral ceremony for the victims, in southwestern city of Ahvaz, Iran, Monday, Sept. 24, 2018. (AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi)
Four militants attacked Saturday’s parade commemorating the start of the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war, spraying the crowd with gunfire in an attack that left civilians among the dead.
Iranian officials have blamed jihadist separatists, backed by Gulf Arab allies of the United States, for the attack.
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Speaking to a group of Iranian athletes, Khamenei said the attack “once again shows the Iranian nation faces many enemies on its proud path of progress and development.”
“This cowardly act was the work of those very individuals who are rescued by the Americans whenever they are in trouble in Iraq and Syria and who are funded by the Saudis and the [United] Arab Emirates,” he said.
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