Prayer leader killed in southern Iran
Mohammad Sabahi, prayer leader of Kazeroun, was shot after leading the prayers on Friday
TEHRAN: A preacher in southern Iran died of his wounds Friday hours after being shot following the main weekly Muslim prayers, state media reported.
Mohammad Sabahi who served as the Friday prayer leader for the city of Kazeroun, in Fars province, 900 kilometres south of Tehran, was shot after leading the prayers, state television said.
He was taken to hospital for treatment but succumbed to his wounds, Kazeroun governor Mohammad Ali Bekhrad told the broadcaster.
Bekhrad said Sabahi "was targeted by someone with a firearm" but offered no motive for the shooting.
Iranian media said he was the third prayer leader in Kazeroun to have been murdered since the Islamic revolution of 1979.
Sabahi's predecessor Mohammad Khorsand was fatally stabbed outside his home in 2019.
Murders of clerics are not uncommon in Iran.
In April last year, powerful cleric Ayatollah Abbas Ali Soleimani was killed in a bank branch in the city of Babolsar in the northern province of Mazandaran. A bank security guard was later sentenced to death over the killing.