Team Clarion
NEW DELHI — A senior Iranian cleric, Abbas-Ali Soleimani, has been assassinated in an armed attack when he was inside a bank in he city of Babolsar in the northern province of Mazandaran on Wednesday.
Media reports quote eyewitnesses saying, an unidentified person snatched the gun of a guard and shot at Ayatollah Abbas-Ali Soleimani, killing him on the spot. The assailant was arrested soon after the attack.
According to the Associated Press report, confusion persisted hours after the attack. Soleimani had been at a bank in the city when another man seized a guard’s firearm and began shooting over a personal dispute with an employee, striking and killing the cleric, state TV initially said. State TV later said it was the guard himself who opened fire.
The discrepant accounts could not be immediately reconciled. The Interior Ministry announced it would launch a special investigation into the cleric’s slaying, says the report.
Abbas-Ali Soleimani, 75, was a member of the Assembly of Experts which selects the country’s supreme leader.
Soleimani was a former representative of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Khamenei’s representatives are clerics who officiate on behalf of the supreme leader at a provincial level.
In addition to his role as an imam who led Friday prayers, Soleimani was also responsible for conducting weekly services in the cities of Kashan located in central Isfahan province, and Zahedan located in the southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchistan.
