Two dozen people were killed Saturday during an attack by armed militants at a military parade in Tehran.
Reuters reports that at least 25 people, half of whom were were members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, the country’s elite fighting force, were slain in the attack by four gunmen.
According to the outlet, gunmen also injured more than 60 people when they opened fire on a stand where Iranian officials had gathered to watch the parade.
{mosads}The four gunmen were also killed, according to Iranian state television, which appeared to blame Sunni Muslim militants for the violence. A video shown to Iranian state media reportedly shows soldiers scrambling to respond to the shooting while civilians fled.
Women and children were among those killed in Saturday’s attack, according to state television.
Two armed groups, the Islamic State and an Arab opposition group called the Ahvaz National Resistance, both claimed responsibility for the shooting, but provided no evidence for their claims.
According to Reuters, One senior Iranian official speculated to state television that the attackers were not linked to terrorist groups, but instead were from Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency and the CIA.
“They are not from Daesh [the Islamic State] or other groups fighting [Iran’s] Islamic system … but they are linked to America and Mossad,” a brigadier general said, according to Reuters.
“These terrorists … were trained and organized by two … Gulf countries,” he added.
The attack Saturday came the same day as Iranian President Hassan Rouhani warned that the U.S. would suffer the “same fate” as Iraq if it challenged Iran over the country’s ballistic missile program.
“The same will happen to Trump. America will suffer the same fate as Saddam Hussein,” Rouhani said Saturday according to Reuters.
“Iran will not abandon its defensive weapons … including its missiles that make America so angry,” he continued.