Mehr News Agency (MNA) reported on January 11 that issuing a statement on January 11, Iran's Intelligence Ministry said that one of the suicide bombers of the recent Kerman terrorist attack was an Israeli who had Tajik citizenship.

Saying that 35 more people were arrested over the Kerman terrorist attack case, the ministry reportedly underlined that it had obtained some clues regarding the identity of the second suicide bomber as well.

MNA says that according to the statement, the main designer and supporter of the criminal operation had illegally entered Iran through the country's southeastern borders on December 19, 2023. 

The statement reportedly added that in addition to directing the operation, the terrorist was an expert in the production of handmade bombs, adding that he left the country two days before the tragic disaster after combining various explosive and electrical components and producing bombs.

In addition to the exploded suicide vests, the terrorists had prepared explosive equipment and fabric for the production of two other explosive vests and buried them so that it would not be possible to discover them, it added.

Stressing that the process of identifying the preparators of Takfiri terrorism continues inside and outside the country, the ministry hailed the assistance of the Iranian people in identifying terrorist elements.

Meanwhile, Iran’s official IRNA news agency reported that the Ministry of Intelligence said on Thursday that the main suspect who planned the bombings was a Tajik national known by his alias Abdollah Tajiki.  

According to IRNA, the suspect had entered the country in mid-December by crossing Iran’s southeast border, and left two days before the attack, after making the bombs.

IRNA says the report also identified one of the bombers by his family name of Bozrov, saying the man was 24 years old and had Tajik and Israeli nationality. It said he also arrived in Iran by crossing the southeastern border after months of training by the IS terrorist group in Afghanistan.

Media reports say the January 3 attack — in which two suicide bombers targeted a commemoration for Iranian general Qassem Soleimani, slain in a 2020 US drone strike in Iraq — was the deadliest in Iran in decades. 

One bomber reportedly detonated his explosives at the ceremony in Kerman, then another attacked 20 minutes later as emergency workers and other people tried to help the wounded from the first explosion.

According to MNA, the twin bomb blasts resulted in the tragic loss of at least 93 lives, including 9 children, and left nearly 300 individuals injured, with some in critical condition.

Recall, some media outlets report that the second Kerman suicide bomber attacker was also Tajik national. 

IRNA reported on January 4 that “the Daesh (Daesh is the acronym for the group's full Arabic name, al-Dawla al-Islamiya fi al-Iraq wa al-Sham) terrorist group has claimed responsibility for the attacks in Iran’s southeastern city of Kerman.”

The Kerman attack is reportedly not the first time the Islamic State – Khorasan Province (ISIS–K), a regional branch of the Islamic State (IS) terrorist group, tapped its Central Asian jihadist contingent to commit acts of violence outside of its local Afghanistan-Pakistan zone of operations or even against Iran itself.  ISIS-K has targeted the Islamic Republic and sites of significance to Shia Muslims in the past.  Two attacks, less than a year apart, took aim at the Shah Cheragh shrine in Shiraz.

In August, a gunman entered the Shah Cheragh shrine and fatally shot one parishioner and injured three others.  Iran credited the assault to ISIS-K, and reports claimed that 10 people, all foreign nationals, had been arrested in relation to the attack.  An earlier attack occurred in October 2022 that claimed the lives of 13 people and injured 40 others.  The shooters in both incidents were reportedly ISIS-K-linked and from Tajikistan.