Shia cleric shot, wounded in Iran's Isfahan: media
Shia cleric shot, wounded in Iran's Isfahan: media
Shia cleric Mohsen Akhavan was shot and subsequently injured by an assailant on a motorcycle in the city of Isfahan, as he retuned home after leading morning prayers in a mosque in the city.
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The Shia cleric was not 'seriously injured' and is being treated in hospital following the attack, according to state media [Getty]
A in central Iran was injured on Saturday morning after an assailant on a motorcycle shot at him, Iranian state media said.
Mohsen Akhavan, who holds the clerical rank of hojatoleslam, was targeted in the city of , according to the website of state broadcaster IRIB.
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 and injured a third in the courtyard of the main shrine of the northeastern holy city of Mashhad.
Abdolatif Moradi, 21, was on June 20 in the same city after being convicted over the attack, according to the judicial authority.
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.
The attack in came days after two Sunni clerics were shot dead outside a seminary in the northern Iranian town of Gonbad-e Kavus.
The three suspects in that case, also Sunnis, were arrested in late April but were said to have "no connection with terrorist groups", state media reported at the time.
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