Iran executes 9 Islamic State militants, detained for 2018 attack, by hanging

Iran has executed nine militants of the Islamic State group detained after a 2018 attack, it said on Tuesday.

According to an AP report, the Iranian judiciary’s Mizan news agency announced the executions, saying that the death sentences had been upheld by the country’s top court.

It described the militants as being detained after they were in a clash in the country's western region with Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, in which three troops and several Islamic State group fighters were killed. Authorities said they had seized a cache of combat weapons, including a machine gun and 50 grenades, after surrounding the militants' hideout in the country’s west.

Iran carries out executions by hanging.

The Islamic State group

The group, which once held vast territory across Iraq and Syria in a self-described caliphate it declared in 2014, ultimately was beaten back by US-led forces.

It has been in disarray in the years since, though it has mounted major assaults. In neighboring Afghanistan, for instance, the Islamic State group is believed to have grown in strength since the fall of the Western-backed government there to the Taliban in 2021.

The group previously claimed a June 2017 attack in Tehran on parliament and a mausoleum of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini that killed at least 18 people and wounded more than 50. It has claimed other attacks as well in Iran, including two suicide bombings in 2024 targeting a commemoration for an Iranian general slain in a 2020 US drone strike. That assault killed at least 94 people, the AP report said.

Violence by IS group fuels unrest in Mali

Jihadists have intensified their offensives in the Sahel region in recent weeks, carrying out bloody raids in Mali, incursions into major cities in Burkina Faso and inflicting heavy army losses in Niger.

The three Sahel states' military juntas, who had pledged during the coups that brought them to power to make security a priority, are struggling to contain the advance of jihadists, who are threatening more than ever neighbouring countries on the west African coast.

Several hundred soldiers have been killed in various attacks claimed by the Al-Qaeda-affiliated Group for the Support of Islam and Muslims (JNIM) in Mali and Burkina Faso, and the Islamic State in the Sahel (EIS) group in Niger, an AFP report said.