http://english.aljazeera.net/news/middleeast/2009/06/2009620132947283202.html
UPDATED ON:
Saturday, June 20, 2009
17:09 Mecca time, 14:09 GMT
'Suicide blast' hits Tehran shrine
At least one person has been killed after a suspected suicide bomber
reportedly blew himself up near the shrine of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the
leader of Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution.
Two other people were wounded in the explosion in Tehran, the Iranian
capital, local news agencies reported on Saturday.
"A terrorist detonated his explosive vest in the Imam Khomeini shrine ...
[causing] damage in one section of it," Hossein Sajedinia, Iran's deputy police
chief for operations, told the Mehr news agency.
Al Jazeera's Teymoor Nabili, who recently returned from covering the
Iranian presidential election, said that many people would believe the
explosion was "a government conspiracy".
"The official media is widely distrusted ... so irrespective of who
really carried out that bombing, I am sure that the protesters on the street
will feel that the government has simply engineered something to blame them for
something else," he said.
'Forced confrontation'
But he said that it was possible that the People's Mujahidin of Iran, a
group which calls for the overthrow of the Islamic republic, could have carried
out the attack.
"They have dwindled in number and they have certainly dwindled as far as
credibility is concerned, but you can't write off the fact they may still have
some capability," he said.
Mehrdad Khonsari, a former Iranian diplomat, told Al Jazeera: "We have to
wait and see who instigated that blast ... but the whole point is the regime
has forced a situation whereby there is a confrontation.
"They have tried to intimidate the protesters from not coming and not
embarking on the course which they have. That has apparently failed. So the
question is, how much more can this situation escalate?
"If this blast has led to the death of a number of people, this will
infuriate the masses and it will propel them to want to engage. This is how
revolutions happen."
The explosion took place as police fired tear gas and water cannon at
thousands of protesters gathered in Tehran to protest over the disputed
re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the Iranian president.
[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
