LEAKED FOOTAGE: Militia Filmed Training Inside Iranian Middle School Campus
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Leaked video has surfaced showing armed members of the IRGC-backed Fatemiyoun militia conducting weapons training on the grounds of a newly built girls' middle school in Saravan, a city in Iran's Sistan and Baluchestan province. The footage, first reported by the Iranian human rights group Haalvsh and covered by Iran International, shows individuals in the Gosht area of Saravan county performing armed drills, including prone firing positions and coordinated movements, directly on the school's campus. The Fatemiyoun militia is composed primarily of Afghan Shia refugees living in Iran, recruited, trained, and equipped by the IRGC's Quds Force, and has a long history of combat deployment in Syria's civil war under Iranian direction.
The discovery comes amid what rights monitors describe as expanding Fatemiyoun and Zainabiyoun activity across Sistan and Baluchestan, a province long marked by economic neglect and tension between its Sunni-majority Baloch population and Iran's central government. Local authorities separately announced plans for a massive military exercise in the province expected to involve as many as 100,000 participants from so-called "Iran-Sacrificing" battalions, though officials have not clarified which forces or affiliations will take part. Human rights organizations, including Amnesty International, have previously accused Fatemiyoun of war crimes and sectarian violence during its deployments abroad, and its reported presence training on Iranian soil, let alone on the grounds of a school for young girls, has raised fresh alarm that Tehran may be replicating that model of paramilitary control within its own borders.