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Caught On Tape: Tornado In Minnesota
By
CBS News
Published: Sun, April 13, 2008 - 1:14 pm
Last Updated: Sun, April 13, 2008 - 1:22 pm
Last Updated: Sun, April 13, 2008 - 1:22 pm
The explosion ripped through a mosque that was packed with hundreds of worshippers late on Saturday.
It went off as a cleric was delivering his weekly speech against extremist Wahabi beliefs and the outlawed Bahai faith, the semiofficial Fars news agency said.
Authorities said 191 people were also wounded, some of them critically, the state IRNA news agency reported.
Mohammad-Reza Rezazadeh, governor of the Fars province, said there was "no evidence to prove that this blast was intentional", adding that the location of the explosion "was near an exhibition where a number of weapons from the Iran-Iraq war were displayed".
Earlier on Sunday, Mohammad Ali Hosseini, a spokesman for Iranian Foreign Ministry, said he could not prejudge the cause of the explosion and that no group had claimed responsibility.
Some of the survivors spoke on Sunday about the blast, describing a loud noise and a "massive explosion".
The explosion at the mosque, part of the Rahpouyan-e-Vesal cultural centre, shook houses more than two kilometers (a mile) away.
Ambulances and firefighters rushed to the scene but a stampede by the crowd made their work more difficult, officials said.
Not all in Iran believed the explosion to have been an accident.
One Tehran resident said he believed the blast was "aimed at disturbing the internal security of Iran and at destabilizing the country".
"I do not think foreign agents are involved in the incident," Salimi told AP Television on Sunday.
He said he believed "hands from inside the country" were behind the incident.
Early on, the Fars agency quoted a local police official as saying a homemade bomb had caused the explosion and indicated the attack could been
religiously motivated.
But the agency backed off those speculations on Sunday.
Shiraz, some 440 miles south of Tehran and the capital of Fars province, is a major draw for foreign tourists who come to see the ruins of nearby Persepolis, the capital of ancient Persia.
The blast was a rare incident in the otherwise peaceful town and officials urged the public to donate blood and called all nurses in the city
in on duty.
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