TEHRAN: One Iranian cleric was stabbed to death and two others were injured on Tuesday in a rare attack at Iran’s largest holy Shia religious complex in the northeastern city of Mashhad.
Iranian state media reported said the assailant had been arrested and the injured clerics were shifted to hospital after being stabbed with a knife at the courtyard of the Imam Reza shrine on the third day of the fasting month of Ramazan.
Videos posted on social media showed two men on the ground of the shrine’s courtyard covered with blood. Iran’s state news agency posted footage of police arresting the assailant, without identifying him.
State television identified the cleric who was killed as Mohammad Aslani, but gave no details about the injured ones and their conditions. “The identity of the arrested assailant is under investigation,” state TV quoted a statement by the Astan Qods Razavi, a religious group which manages the shrine.
The Imam Reza shrine in Mashhad is the largest complex housing a tomb in Iran and its most visited. The shrine draws about 20 million people a year, mostly Iranians and pilgrims from neighboring nations like Iraq and Pakistan.
Such violent acts at the holy shrine are rare. In 1994, a bomb ripped through the main hall at the Imam Reza shrine, killing 26 people. It is considered one of the biggest terrorist attacks in Iranian history.
The stabbings on Tuesday followed a separate attack targeting clerics earlier this week. On Sunday, two Sunni clerics were killed in a mosque in the town of Gonbad-e Kavus in northern Golestan province without providing details.
