Four Dead Amid Car Blast, Shooting in Southern Iranian Port of Chabahar

Videos posted on Twitter, purportedly from Chabahar, showed thick smoke rising from the area.

The SITE Intelligence Group reported that Sunni militant group Ansar al-Furqan had claimed responsibility for the attack.

Immediately after the bomber detonated the auto bomb, gunmen attempted to storm the police headquarters but were killed by security forces, Iranian media reported.

At least three people have been killed following a suicide auto bombing attack near a police post in Iran's southern port city of Chabahar, state television Press TV reported, quoting security and local officials.

The top Iranian diplomat took to his Twitter page on Thursday to react to the vehicle bomb attack, which he said was perpetrated by "foreign-backed terrorists".

The bomber drove his vehicle, loaded with explosives, up to the police headquarters, provincial official Rahmdel Bameri told state TV.

Iran´s Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif says "such crimes won´t go unpunished".

It hosts the operation of a joint port project between Iran and India.

Pakistan has strongly denounced a terrorist attack in Iranian port city of Chahbahar, that claimed lives of at least three innocent people while injuring forty others.

Chabahar lies in Sistan-Baluchistan province which has always been a flashpoint, with Pakistan-based Baluchi separatists and Sunni Muslim extremists carrying out cross-border attacks targeting the Shiite authorities.

Chabahar has a deep-water port on the Gulf of Oman and with Indian assistance Iran has been developing it as a major energy and freight hub between Central Asia and India, bypassing Pakistan.

Citing Afghanistan's economy, the United States last approved a sanctions exemption for Chabahar when it re-imposed a second round of bans against Iran months after its withdrawal from a 2015 multilateral deal with Iran, which is officially known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA).

Arab separatists and the Islamic State group both claimed the assault. "There can be no justification for any act of terror", the ministry said. Mark my words: "Iran WILL bring terrorists & their masters to justice".