At least thirteen people were killed and forty injured on Wednesday (October 26th) in Shiraz, southern Iran, in an attack on a Shiite place of worship led by “three terrorists” armed, state television said. The mausoleum of Shah-Tcheragh houses the tomb of Ahmad, the brother of Imam Reza, the eighth Shiite imam buried in Mashhad (north-east).
Media initially reported three assailants, two of whom were arrested. However, the head of the local judicial authority, Kazem Moussavi, claimed on television that “only one terrorist was involved in this attack”. “A terrorist affiliated with takfiri groups has been arrested”, TV added. The term “takfiri” designates, in Iran and in several countries, the jihadist groups or Sunni radical Islamists.
A woman and two children are among the victims, Fars news agency reported. “The arrested terrorists are not Iranians”added the same source, without further details.
In early April, a native-born “Uzbek” 21-year-old stabbed two Shia clerics to death and wounded a third in the courtyard of Imam Reza shrine in Mashhad, a famous shrine. Accused of “moharebeh” (being an “enemy of God” in Persian), the assailant was hanged on June 7 in the same city, according to the judicial authority.