TEHRAN, Jan 24: At least eight people were killed and dozens more injured in a double bomb attack on Tuesday in Ahvaz, where a scheduled visit by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had been cancelled at the last minute.

Witnesses said the first bomb to rock the city dominated by Arabs exploded in front of a private bank and busy commercial area and the second in front of a government building.

“The president had been scheduled to give a speech this morning in Ahvaz, although the bombs did not explode in the same place where the speech was scheduled to have been delivered,” an aide to the president said. “President Ahmadinejad’s visit to the province was cancelled on Monday afternoon because of bad weather.”

Situated close to the border with British-controlled southern Iraq, Ahvaz has been hit by a wave of insecurity over the past year.

“We think this is by the same movements who were behind the previous incidents. Most of them had been arrested but there were a few on the run,” Ahvaz Governor Mohammad Jafar Sarami said.

Interior Minister Mostafa Pour-Mohammadi said the attacks were ‘directed from abroad’, but stopped short of repeating past allegations that Britain was trying to destabilize the area.

Nursing a bandaged head, bank manager Samad Tavakoli described a ‘huge bang’ outside his now destroyed branch. “We had a lot of customers in the bank, there was a sudden power cut and then an explosion. It was a really huge bang. —AFP