By Zahra Hosseinian and Hossein Jaseb
TEHRAN (Reuters) - A bomb exploded in a mosque in thesouthern Iranian city Shiraz on Saturday, killing at least ninepeople and wounding more than 100, Iranian media reported.
Ambulances rushed to the scene of the blast in a crowdeddistrict of the city, state television said.
"At least nine people were killed and 105 injured in theblast," the semi-official Fars news agency quoting a localhospital official as saying.
The death toll was expected to rise because some of thewounded were in critical condition, the official said.
State television urged people in Shiraz to donate blood forthe wounded and said that all nurses in the city had beencalled to report for work.
The official IRNA news agency said the bomb exploded duringan address by a cleric in the Shohada mosque in Shiraz.
Fars said that on Saturday nights the cleric usually gavespeeches on the Baha'i faith, an offshoot of Islam consideredheretical by the country's Shi'ite Muslim establishment. Itsmembers claim they face discrimination and persecution in Iran.
Iran says that all Iranians, regardless of creed, enjoy thesame rights.
No one claimed responsibility for the blast but the deputygovernor of the province, Mohammad Reza Hadaegh, told statetelevision an investigation was under way.
Fars quoted a police official as saying the bomb was a"hand-made" device and had been planted in the mosque.
A 20-year-old woman wounded by the blast said there wereabout 800 people inside the mosque at 1645 GMT (5:45 p.m.British time), when the bomb exploded. "After we heard anexplosion, there was smoke everywhere," Saeedeh Ghorbani toldFars.
Security is normally tight in Iran and bomb attacks havebeen rare in recent years. Several people were killed in 2005and 2006 in a string of blasts in the southwestern oil cityAhvaz.
In February, 65 men were arrested and accused of beingbehind a bombing that killed members of the elite RevolutionaryGuards in a southeastern border province which has a minorityArab population.
Tehran has in the past accused Britain and the UnitedStates of trying to destabilize the country by supportingethnic minority rebels operating in sensitive border areas.
Washington accuses Iran of destabilizing Iraq by supportingIraqi Shi'ite militia groups. Iran denies this.
The United States is leading efforts to isolate Iran overits nuclear programme, which the West fears is a cover for adrive to build nuclear bombs. Tehran says it wants only togenerate electricity.
(Additional reporting by Zahra Hosseinian and HosseinJaseb, Writing by Parisa Hafezi, Editing by Tim Pearce)
