Data suggests that violence has increased in Iran in recent years.

Tehran: In what has been termed the deadliest shooting reported in decades in Iran, a 30-year-old man gunned down 12 of his relatives on Saturday in a remote rural area in southeast Iran.

Ebrahim Hamidi, the Head of the Justice Department of the province of Kerman told the semi-official ISNA news agency that the gunman opened fire on his father, brother, and other relatives early morning in a village because of family disputes.

The report, which did not identify the assailant, stated he used a Kalashnikov assault rifle.

Local media report on occasional shootings, but this attack has had the highest death toll in Iran, where citizens are only legally allowed hunting rifles, common in rural areas.

In an earlier incident reported in 2022, an employee, who was dismissed from a state-owned financial conglomerate, opened fire at his former workplace, killing three people and injuring another five before killing himself in the country’s west. Six years before that in 2016, a 26-year-old man shot 10 relatives in a rural area in the south of Iran.

Data suggests that violence has increased in Iran in recent years as the country Persian Gulf country is suffering from deteriorating economic conditions coupled with crushing American sanctions that helped spark soaring inflation and increasing unemployment.

(With AP inputs)