Iran ? An explosion in a mosque killed 15 people near Iran’s volatile border with Pakistan and Afghanistan on Thursday and a local official said it was a terrorist attack.

The blast went off in Zahedan, the capital of a lawless province in southeast Iran that frequently witnesses clashes between police and gangs involved in drug smuggling.

It has also seen attacks by an Islamic militant group called Jundallah, which claims to be fighting for rights of Sunni Muslims in mainly Shiite Iran but is suspected of al-Qaida links.

Alaeddin Mazari, a local journalist in Zahedan, told The Associated Press that the explosion occurred in the second biggest Shiite Muslim mosque in the city, some 1,000 miles southeast of the capital, Tehran.