Iranian bombing victim buried

The Iranian physics professor who was killed in a bomb blast earlier this week has been buried in Tehran, with hundreds of mourners joining the funeral procession.

Relatives of Massoud Ali Mohammadi were accompanied by members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards as they carried his body from his house to a nearby shrine on Thursday.

Some of the mourners shouted slogans such as “Death to Israel” and “Death to America” while the semi-official Fars news agency said some people carried green banners in a show of support for the opposition.

Neither the police nor the intelligence services have yet reported any leads in their investigation of the explosion which killed Ali Mohammadi outside his home in north Tehran on Tuesday.

Senior Iranian officials have blamed the remote-controlled blast on an exile opposition group they claim has ties to the US and Israel.

‘Terrorist act’

Mohammad Khatami and Hashemi Rafsanjani, both former Iranian presidents, condemned the attack in separate statements on Wednesday.

They did not directly accuse any group of the killing, but each honoured Ali Mohammadi – a 50-year-old researcher and lecturer in quantum physics - as a victim of terrorism.