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Iranian Death Train Thought Sabotaged

DEBKAfile Exclusive Report

February 20, 2004, 5:42 PM (GMT+02:00)





Little credence is given in Tehran to the official claim that the colossal train explosion which killed at least 300 people and razed five villages in the northeast Khorassan province Wednesday, February 18, was caused by colliding wagons carrying industrial chemicals, fertilizers, diesel fuel and cotton. Such flammable freights are usually shipped separately in Iran.

DEBKAfile’s sources note that Iranian officials, two days before a highly controversial parliamentary election, are doing their best to play down the disaster outside Neyshabur which rocked houses 50 miles away in Mashad. The Islamic Republican News Agency tried to blame an earth tremor force 3.5, but the US Geological Institute in Colorado says no seismic activity was reported in the area.

Most of the dead were fire and rescue workers, but also the city’s governor Mojtaba Farahmand-Nekou, its mayor and fire chief.

DEBKAfile’s sources in Tehran have heard unconfirmed reports that the disaster was no accident, but possibly sabotage carried out by anti-government forces in Khorassan province, which borders on Afghanistan. This report ties in without another that claims the train was not carrying innocent industrial cargoes but hundreds of tons of explosive materials Iran was smuggling into Afghanistan via the Shiite city of Herat to be used by Iranian saboteurs and agents for guerrilla attacks on US troops and the forces of President Hamid Karzai, as well for supplying the Taleban in their Kandahar stronghold.

DEBKAfile’s sources report that there were a series of blasts, the first inside the Neyshabur train station was powerful enough to trigger a second explosion in the remote station of Khayyam. There, it set ablaze another train carrying fuel and other flammable material.

Iran has long used Khorassan province as a conduit for smuggling thousands of its agents into Afghanistan. But the province is also home to nearly two million Afghan refugees, some of whom hire out to the Kabul government or the US military. The suggestion is that a group of these agents were ordered to blow up the train when it pulled into Neyshabur. Their mission: to deter the Iranians from further meddling in Afghanistan.

It would not have been hard to persuade Afghan refugees to undertake the mission. As Sunni Muslims, they harbor strong feelings of resentment over their discrimination at the hands of Iran’s Shiite majority. Three years ago, Afghans were responsible for a large explosion in Mashad, an attack launched after Iran ordered the destruction of a makeshift mosque the refugees had built. Several weeks later, a similar blast occurred in Zahedan, capital of Iran’s Baluchestan province, where Iranian authorities had pulled another mosque constructed by the refugees.

In the historic town of Neyshabur, site of Wednesday’s horror, the 11th century poet Omar Khayam was born and buried

[redemption]

I don't care what some say about DEBKAfilez - they do a good job and what they have said is probably closest thing that anyone has said so far to the truth. The payload was definitely not harmless and considering the cargo, was not destined for any place other than within Afghanistan. Of course - who knows exactly how the explosion happened and if it was in fact intercepted by anti-regime agents, neverthless it is TRAGIC! I'm sure later in the future after this time has passed and people come out - or write books, we will find the truth!
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