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KABUL: Iran police shot at a vehicle carrying Afghans being smuggled, igniting a fire which then killed at least three people.
Three were killed and ten others wounded after their vehicle was set ablaze by Iranian police shooting, survivors claimed.
An Iranian security official on Thursday denied that police shooting was responsible for a vehicle fire in Yazd Province that killed at least three Afghan citizens and wounded several others.
But the Iranian officials called over speeding as a motive behind the incident.
The video which went viral on the social media shows that the people inside the car are burning. One of them, who succeeded to leave the car with a burned shoulder says, “help, bring me water, I am burning.”
The video shows that an Iranian national is saying, “the patrol was following them, shot them and left.”
Meanwhile, some members of the parliament and civil rights activists have expressed criticism over the government, saying that it has always been failed to probe the issue of brutal acts of Iran against the Afghans.
Hamidullah Hanif, a member of the parliament called on the Afghanistan’s ministry of foreign affairs to seriously investigate the issue. Voicing frustration over the recent incident of the Afghan migrants, he said that the issue of the Afghan migrants drowning into the river by the Iran border guards has not been probed yet.
Sayed Ashraf Sadat, a civil rights activist said that the incident is showing “tragic series of the Afghans’ fate” in Iran. He called on the government and international communities to take actions against such issues.
But an official in the Afghan consulate in Zahidan state of Iran, Murtaza Khorami said that a vehicle with 13 passengers including a Pakistani national got fired in Mehriz village of Yazd city. The wounded are said to be in a sever health condition.
According to the Iranian officials, Khorami said the motive behind the incident was overs speeding. However he also confirmed that one of the survivors claims that the car was targeted by the Iranian police.
He said that the consulate would send a delegation to probe the issue and find out further details.
The ministry of foreign affairs in a statement said that it has instructed the Afghanistan embassy in Tehran to investigate the incident.
Earlier, over 50 Afghan migrants, who were trying to illegally cross the border, were tortured and then thrown into the river by the Iran’s border guards. According to reports, 12 of them died and 17 others gone disappeared.
The Afghan government has then appointed a delegation to probe the issue but the results have still not been finalized.
