Bomb Kills 25 Worshipers, Injures 70 in Iran Mausoleum
A bomb blew up in a crowded mausoleum in Iran’s holy city of Mashhad on Monday, killing 25 people and wounding 70 gathered for prayer, Iran’s official news agency said.
Police arrested a number of people in connection with the blast, the official Islamic Republic News Agency said in reports monitored in Nicosia. It gave no further details.
The government blamed the opposition Moujahedeen Khalq for the bombing.
But the dissident group denied involvement in the attack on Mashhad, 450 miles east of Tehran.
The news agency initially reported 70 dead and 114 wounded. But it said later that those figures were based on accounts from witnesses and that an unidentified Interior Ministry official had announced the lower toll.
The bomb reportedly exploded in the prayer hall of the mausoleum of Imam Reza, a saint in the Shiite branch of Islam. Worshipers were observing the mourning day of Ashura, the anniversary of the 7th-Century martyrdom of the Shiites’ most revered saint, Hussein, grandson of the Prophet Mohammed, Islam’s founder.
State-run television said the blast was caused by an 11-pound bomb.
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