Iranian state media said a Shia cleric in central Iran was injured on Saturday morning after a motorcyclist shot him.
According to the website of state broadcaster IRIB, Mohsin Akhawan, who holds the post of Hojatoleslam’s clerk, was targeted in the city of Isfahan.
The IRIB said that Akhawan, the imam of a mosque in the city, was returning home after offering morning prayers when the attack took place.
The report said the cleric, who was earlier working at the Isfahan Islamic seminary, was “not seriously injured” and was undergoing treatment at the hospital.
In early April, a Sunni extremist of Uzbek origin stabbed two Shia clerics to death and wounded a third in the courtyard of the main temple in the northeastern holy city of Mashhad.
According to the judicial authority, 21-year-old Abdoltif Moradi was hanged in the same city on June 20 after pleading guilty to the attack.
Judicial officials said Moradi was accused of “mohrabeh (‘war against God’, in Persian) of using a weapon to terrorize the shrine and the population outside it.”
The attack in Mashhad comes days after two Sunni clerics were shot dead outside a seminary in the northern Iranian city of Gonbad-e Qawas.
Three suspects in that case, Sunnis, were also arrested in late April, but were said to have “no links to terrorist groups”, state media reported at the time.
read all breaking news, today’s fresh newswatch top videos And live TV Here.