At least 15 people died on Wednesday and dozens were injured in an attack on the main Shiite shrine in southern Iran. The terrorist act was claimed by the Islamic State (IS) group.
The attack was carried out by an individual “during evening prayers” at Shah Cheragh’s mausoleum in the city of Shiraz, the region’s governor, Mohammad-Hadi Imanieh, said.
The aggressor “opened fire blindly against the faithful” in that mausoleum, where the tomb of Ahmad, brother of Imam Reza, one of the most revered figures in Shiism, is located.
“A single terrorist is involved in this attack,” said the head of the local judiciary, Kazem Mousavi, reporting a balance of “at least 15 dead and 19 wounded.” The author of the attack, “affiliated with groups takfiriHe was arrested,” he added.
The term takfiri designates members of radical Sunni groups, another branch of Islam. The television said that “the attacker was injured by security forces” and that he is “undergoing surgery at the hospital”.
This attack occurs in the midst of a wave of protests in Iran, caused by the death on December 16 of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurdish woman, three days after being detained by the morality police for not stick to the dress code for women.
This is the second attack this year against a Shiite place of worship in Iran, a country of 83 million people, where that branch of Islam is the state religion.
In early April, a 21-year-old man of Uzbek origin stabbed two Shiite religious men and wounded another in the courtyard of the Imam Reza shrine in Mashad, Iran’s second largest city.
