TEHRAN (Reuters) - A blast in a mosque in southern Iran that killed at least 10 people on Saturday was not an attack and was probably caused by negligence, Iranian media on Sunday quoted a police official as saying.
Iranian news agencies had reported that a bomb exploded ina mosque in the southern city of Shiraz, also wounding morethan 160 people.
But the English-language Press TV said on Sunday the blast"may have been caused by explosives left behind from an earlierexhibition commemorating" the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.
The semi-official Fars News Agency carried a similarreport, apparently based on comments from the same official.
"Based on the initial evaluation, the Saturday nightexplosion ... has not been intentional or sabotage," it quotedthe commander of the security forces in the southern Farsprovince, Ali Moayedi, as saying.
Iran's foreign ministry spokesman said the investigationwas continuing.
"The latest news we have ... is that there was no firmstance by police and security officials as the investigation isstill ongoing," Mohammad Ali Hosseini told a weekly newsconference. "Therefore no pre-judgement can be made about theincident," he said.
Late on Saturday, Fars quoted a police official as saying a"hand-made" device had been planted in the mosque. A localhospital official said the death toll was expected to rise.
State television urged people in Shiraz to donate blood forthe wounded and said all nurses in the city had been called toreport for work.
The official IRNA news agency said the blast took placeduring an address by a cleric in the Shohada mosque in Shiraz.
A 20-year-old woman wounded by the blast said there wereabout 800 people inside the mosque when the bomb exploded."After we heard an explosion, there was smoke everywhere,"Saeedeh Ghorbani told Fars.
Security is normally tight in Shi'ite Muslim Iran and bombattacks have been rare in recent years. But several people werekilled in 2005 and 2006 in blasts in southwestern Iran.
Tehran has in the past accused Britain and the UnitedStates of trying to destabilise the country by supportingethnic minority rebels operating in sensitive border areas.
(Writing by Fredrik Dahl)
