A bomb tore through a military parade in Iran yesterday killing 12 people as the Islamic republic showcased its weaponry at events marking the start 30 years ago of the bloody Iran-Iraq war.

Among the dead were the wives of two commanders, an official said, while medics reported 81 people wounded and fearing the toll will rise.

The bomb, placed just 50 metres from the podium at the parade in the ethnically Kurdish northwestern town of Mahabad in West Ajarbaijan province, exploded at around 10.20 a.m. (0650 GMT), officials said.

“The number of martyrs of the incident reached 12,” the head of Iran’s medical emergency services, Gholam Reza Massoumi, told ISNA news agency.

“So far no groups or people have claimed responsibility for this crime,” deputy provincial governor Issa Ghanbari told ISNA, adding that the victims were all women except for a six-year-old boy.

“You cannot give exact figures of the dead and injured yet as it has been a horrible catastrophe and every minute new numbers come out,” local medical emergency chief Hamid Reza Emrani told ISNA.

Western Iran, which has a sizeable Kurdish population, has seen deadly clashes between the Iranian security forces and Kurdish rebel groups, notably the Party of Free Life of Kurdistan (PJAK), which operates from bases in neighbouring Iraq.

Provincial governor Vahid Jalalzadeh blamed the United States and “counter-revolutionaries” for the attack.

“This act has foreign origins. Unfortunately America and its allies are present in the region and their support for counter-revolutionaries and hypocrites has been proven,” he said on state television.

The bombing came as Iran showed off its military hardware at anniversary parades across the country to commemorate the 1980-88 war with Iraq in which an estimated one million people died on both sides.