SULAIMANI (ESTA) — One Iranian cleric was stabbed to death on Tuesday in a rare attack at Iran’s largest holy Shia Muslim religious complex in the northeastern city of Mashhad, Iranian state media reported.
Iran’s semi-official Tasnim news agency reported that the assailant also stabbed two other clerics with a knife at the courtyard of the Imam Reza shrine on the third day of the holy month of Ramadan.
The assailant was arrested and the injured clerics were transferred to the hospital, Tasnim said.
Videos posted on social media showed two men on the ground of the shrine’s courtyard covered with blood, according to Reuters.
State television identified the cleric who was killed as Mohammad Aslani, but gave no details about the injured ones and their conditions, Reuters reported.
“The identity of the arrested assailant is under investigation,” state TV quoted a statement by the Astan Qods Razavi, a multibillion-dollar religious conglomerate, which manages the shrine, according to Reuters.
In 1994, a bomb ripped through the main hall at the Imam Reza shrine, killing 26 people.
On Sunday, Iranian media reported the killing of two Sunni clerics in a mosque in the town of Gonbad-e Kavus in Iran’s northern Golestan province without providing details.
