At least 15 people were killed and others injured Wednesday in an armed “terrorist” attack on a religious shrine in the southern city of Shiraz, in one of the country’s deadliest attacks in recent years. Officials said the attack was carried out by armed “takfiri terrorists” who were arrested as the Iranian president promised a “hard response” to the operation, Extreme writes on Telegram. The attack comes at the height of protests in the country since September 16, the day a young woman, Mahsa Amini, died after she was arrested by the vice police in Tehran amid her failure to comply with strict rules. dress code in islamic republic. Dozens of people died during these protests, most of them were protesters but also members of the security forces, and hundreds of others were arrested. On Wednesday evening, state television reported that “at least 15 people were martyred” in the attack on the shrine of Shah Gharg (“King of Light”) by Sayyid Ahmed bin Musa al-Kadhim, brother of Imam al-Rida, the eighth infallible Shiite Imam.
This shrine, located in Shiraz, the capital of the province of Fars, is one of the most prominent religious shrines in the south of the Islamic Republic. Video footage released by local media on social media included images showing bloodstains on the ground inside the shrine and cloth dyed red, as well as glass shards scattered across the floor and bullet holes in the wall. Iranian agencies have also released photographs showing people lying on the ground covered in blood and bodies lying side by side, wrapped in a white cloth covered in blood. Fars Governor Muhammad Hadi Imaneh said the attack took place around the time of Maghreb prayers.
A video broadcast by local media, which said it was taken from a surveillance camera at the temple, showed a young man with a blond beard carrying a Kalashnikov and firing near what he believed to be the entrance passageway. to the shrine and repeatedly loading his weapon. Meanwhile, the official news agency IRNA, citing an eyewitness, said that he heard “women’s cries, coinciding with the call to prayer.”
According to television, at least 19 people were injured, knowing that the same source originally indicated that about 40 people were injured. Initially, Iranian media reported that the attack was carried out by three armed men, two of whom were arrested. However, Kazem Mousavi, head of the judiciary in Fars Province, which is based in the city of Shiraz, told state television that “only one terrorist was involved in this attack.”
State television said the man arrested is one of the Takfiri terrorists, a term commonly used to refer to fighters belonging to extremist religious organizations. For its part, the Fars news agency indicated that a woman and two children were among the victims, adding that the arrested person was not Iranian.
After the attack, President Ibrahim Raisi promised that “the conspirators and organizers of this heinous crime (…) will face remorse and a firm response from the security forces and the police,” in a message posted on the president’s website. He continued: “Past experience has proved that the enemies of the Iranian people retaliate with violence and murder after they have despaired (…) of sowing discord and kindling division among the close-knit ranks of the people.”
The attack is the second bloody attack on a religious shrine in Iran this year. In early April, two Shia clerics were killed and a third wounded after being stabbed at the Shrine of the Razavi Shrine in the city of Mashhad (northeast).
The 21-year-old assailant was arrested and the media reported he was of Uzbek origin, and the Shiraz attack was the deadliest since February 2019, when 27 Revolutionary Guardsmen were killed in a suicide attack targeting their bus. in the southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchistan on the border with Afghanistan and Pakistan. In September 2018, at least 24 people were killed in an attack on a military parade in the southwestern Iranian city of Ahwas, which authorities blamed on a group linked to “takfiri separatists.” On June 7, 2017, at least 17 people were killed when militants and suicide bombers attacked the Shura Council building and the mausoleum of the founder of the Islamic Republic, Imam Khomeini, in Tehran in a terrorist attack claimed by ISIS.
In December 2010, the extremist group “Soldiers of God” reported a suicide attack on believers in the memory of Ashura in Chabahar (southeast), in which 34 people died and dozens were injured.
In July of that year, at least 28 people were killed and more than 250 injured in an attack on a Shia mosque in Zahedan, the capital of Sistan-Baluchistan province, weeks after God’s Soldiers leader Abd al-Malik Rigi was executed by hanging.
In October 2009, the group claimed a suicide attack that killed 42 people in the town of Pishin near the Pakistani border, aimed at a rally that included Revolutionary Guard officers and local leaders to “strengthen unity between Shiites and Sunnis” .