Even Iran Has It's Terrorism Problems
TEHRAN, Iran - A bomb explosion in a mosque packed with hundreds of worshippers in southern Iran killed at least nine people and injured more than 100 Saturday, local media reported.
The semi-official Fars news agency said the explosion in the city of Shiraz went off as a cleric was delivering his weekly speech against extremist Wahabi beliefs and the outlawed Bahai faith.The report said nine people were killed and 105 injured, some of them critically. The force of the explosion shook houses more than a mile away, and ambulances and firefighters were rushing to the mosque, it said. Officials urged the public to donate blood and called all nurses in the city in on duty.
A police official said a homemade bomb caused the explosion, Fars reported. It also quoted a young woman who was there as saying some 800 worshippers were inside the mosque at the time of the explosion...
...Some believe the group, known as Jundallah, is linked to al-Qaida. Jundallah, or God's Brigade, has waged a low-level insurgency in southeastern Iran.
Besides the violence in the southeast, ethnic Arab Sunni militants have been blamed for bombings in the western city of Ahvaz near the border of Iraq — including blasts in 2006 that killed nine people.
The mosque targeted is part of the Rahpouyan-e-Vesal cultural center in Shiraz, about 559 miles south of the capital, Tehran.
Fars said the mosque's cleric gives a weekly speech denouncing the Bahai faith and Wahabism — an austere brand of Sunni Islam practiced mostly in Saudi Arabia. Such speeches are not unusual in Iranian mosques.
This kinda explains why Iran is taking a part in the mess known as the Iraq occupation: they want one less enemy in the region. Of course, that doesn't mean that they are necessarily allies of the US (at least as long as Bush is in office0.
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