Shiite cleric shot, wounded in central Iran: media

• An assailant on a motorcycle shot at a Shiite cleric in central Iran, state media report.
• Cleric Mohsen Akhavan was not seriously injured and is being treated in hospital.
• In April, a Sunni extremist stabbed two Shiite clerics to death and injured a third.

An assailant on a motorcycle shot at a Shiite cleric in central Iran on Saturday morning, according to Iranian state media.

According to the website of state broadcaster IRIB, Mohsen Akhavan, who holds the clerical rank of hojatoleslam, was targeted in the city of Isfahan.

Akhavan, who was the imam of a mosque in the city, was returning home after leading the morning prayer when the attack occurred, IRIB reported.

The report added that the cleric, who had earlier been working at the Isfahan Islamic seminary, was “not seriously injured” and was being treated in hospital.

In early April, a Sunni extremist of Uzbek origin stabbed two Shiite clerics to death and injured a third in the courtyard of the main shrine of the northeastern holy city of Mashhad.

Abdolatif Moradi, 21, was hanged on June 20 in the same city after being convicted over the attack, according to the judicial authority.

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Moradi “was accused of moharebeh (‘war against God’, in Persian) using a weapon to terrorise the population in the shrine and even outside it”, judicial authorities said.

Two Sunni clerics were killed outside a seminary in the northern Iranian town of Gonbad-e Kavus just days before the Mashhad attack.

The three Sunni suspects in that case were arrested in late April but were said to have “no connection with terrorist groups,” according to state media at the time.

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