Tehran, May 29: The death toll from a suicide bomb attack on a crowded Shia mosque in the southeastern Iranian city of Zahedan has risen to 23, the Fars news agency said on Friday.
Mohammed Gholami, the head of the local Martyrs’ Foundation, told Fars that 23 people were killed in Thursday’s attack on the Amir al-Momenin mosque in Zahedan, the restive capital of Sistan-Baluchestan province.
In fresh violence, gunmen attacked President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s election campaign centre in the southeastern Iranian city of Zahedan on Friday, wounding three people, the official IRNA news agency said.
A top Iranian official accused the US of hiring the bombers. “Three people involved with the terrorist incident were arrested,” Jalal Sayah, deputy provincial governor of Sistan-Balochistan province, told the agency. “According to the information obtained they were hired by America and the agents of the arrogance.”
Ali Mohammed Azad, the governor general of Sistan-Baluchestan province, told IRNA that 125 others were wounded in the attack, which was carried out during evening prayers. “It was a terrorist attack and the bomb was exploded by a terrorist,” he said.
Fars quoted sources as saying the “suicide attacker exploded the bomb in the women’s section” of the shrine, the second biggest Shia mosque in Zahedan.
Fars said the mosque was a “gathering place for revolutionary Shias.” Thursday was a public holiday in Iran to mourn the death of Fatima Zahra, daughter of Prophet Mohammed.
The blast comes weeks ahead of the June 12 presidential election. The province shares border with Pakistan and Afghanistan and has a large ethnic Sunni Baloch minority.
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