Eleven people were killed and at least 191 wounded when an explosion ripped through a mosque in Iran’s southern city of Shiraz during evening prayers by a prominent cleric, officials said yesterday.
Mystery surrounded the cause of Saturday’s blast, which some officials insisted had been triggered by an accident but others said could have been caused by a bomb.
The massive explosion in the men’s section of the mosque took place at around 9pm during an evening prayer sermon by prominent local cleric Mohammad Anjavinejad, Iranian media reported.
PHOTO: AP
Eleven people were killed and 191 wounded, local emergency services official Mohammad Javad Mouradian told the IRNA news agency.
“The incident could have happened as a result of negligence. A while ago at this site there was an exhibition commemorating the [1980 to 1988] Iran-Iraq war,” Fars province police chief Commander Ali Moayeri told the Fars news agency.
“The munitions left at the site could have caused this explosion,” he added.
The agency said he ruled out an act of sabotage.
Television pictures showed shards of glass and piles of debris at the site of the blast while huge crowds gathered to await news of loved ones.
“Last night’s incident ... was definitely an accident. We are studying the cause but as of now but main reason is not clear,” Deputy Interior Minister Abbas Mohtaj told the Mehr news agency.
Other sources, however, indicated that the possibility of a militant attack had not been ruled out.
“A judicial probe has been launched to determine the cause of the explosion and the possibility of sabotage,” Shiraz prosecutor Jaber Baneshi told IRNA. “A final opinion will be given on the cause and the motives behind the blast after a full forensic and investigative report.”
Shiraz Member of Parliament Mohammad Nabi Roodaki also mooted the possibility that the explosion had been caused by munitions used in the Iraq war exhibition.
But he told the student ISNA news agency that investigators were examining the theory that the munitions could have been set off deliberately by remote detonator or by another bomb.
Fars said that the death toll was set to rise because many of the victims were in a critical condition.
“Around 9:15pm, after the sermon, the sound of an explosion resounded in the section reserved for men and a cloud of dust billowed up to the sky,” witness Saideh Ghorbani, 20, told Fars.
“There was a huge blast and the whole place lit up. Everyone started shouting and screaming and tried to help each other,” a witness, Marzian Mohammadnejad, told English language channel Press-TV.
There have been deadly attacks in Iran’s border cities with ethnic minority populations in recent years, but a strike in a non-frontier city such as Shiraz would be unprecedented.
Deadly attacks in Iran have become extremely rare over the past two decades, although the first years after the 1979 Islamic revolution were marked by a succession of bombings in Tehran by outlawed opposition groups.
The last major attack was a strike last February by suspected Sunni rebels in the city of Zahedan in the southeastern Sistan-Baluchestan border province that killed 13 members of the elite Revolutionary Guards.
According to the reports, before Saturday’s blast Anjavinejad had been preaching against Wahhabism — the ultra-conservative form of Sunni Islam practiced in Saudi Arabia. He is reported to be a vehement critic of Wahhabis.
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