By Xinhua,
Tehran : Iran blamed Britain and the United States for having links to a “terrorist group” which engineered a mosque blast last month in the southern city of Shiraz, the state IRNA news agency reported Thursday.
“The main agent of the Shiraz mosque blast was arrested through police efforts, five other suspects had also been arrested in relation to the blast,” Iran’s Intelligence Minister Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejeie was quoted as saying in Shiraz Wednesday night.
Explosives and cyanide had been confiscated from the suspects, and the main agent responsible for the blast was arrested when he was trying to leave Iran from one of its northern cities, he said.
Mohseni Ejeie said the bomb blast was believed to have links with certain Western countries, including Britain and the U.S..
The terrorist group had relations with Britain and the U.S., which were informed about the matter by Iran’s Foreign Ministry, said the minister, adding the two countries supported the terrorists instead of taking any measures against them.
A Shiraz mosque was hit by a huge explosion on April 12 when a prominent local cleric was delivering a speech there, killing 13 and injuring over 200 people.
Local reports initially said it was a bomb blast. Later some officials said it may not be an attack but an accident caused by explosives left behind from an earlier exhibition commemorating the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war.
In the past few years, Iran has been hit by a string of bomb attacks which the authorities blamed on a Sunni group called Jundallah, mostly in its southeastern provinces bordering Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The latest major attack happened on Feb. 14, during which 18 elite Revolutionary Guards were killed in a car explosion in the southeastern city of Zahedan, capital of Sistan-Baluchestan province.
Iran has blamed the U.S. and some other Western countries behind these attacks and accused them of destabilizing the Islamic Republic, a charge denied by London and Washington.