Powerful Iranian cleric killed in attack: state media

Powerful Iranian cleric Abbas Ali Soleimani killed in attack: state media

Ayatollah Abbas Ali Soleimani, 75, was previously the representative of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

1 min read

26 April, 2023

The attack took place in Iran's city of Babolsar in the northern province of Mazandaran, state media reported [Rainer Puster/EyeEm/Getty-file photo]

A powerful Iranian cleric, a member of the Assembly of Experts that selects the country's supreme leader, has been killed in an armed attack, state media said on Wednesday.

"Ayatollah Abbas Ali Soleimani was killed this morning in an armed attack… the assailant was also arrested," the IRNA news agency reported, citing an official.

The attack took place in city of Babolsar in the northern province of Mazandaran, the agency added.

Soleimani, 75, was previously the representative of the country's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

He had also been the imam who led the weekly Friday prayers in the cities of Kashan, in central Isfahan province, and Zahedan in the southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchistan.

Under the constitution, the 88-strong Assembly of Experts is mandated with supervising, dismissing and electing the Supreme Leader.

Last April, a suspected jihadist attack in the northeastern shrine city of Mashhad led to death of two clerics and injury of another.