By Fredrik Dahl and Hashem Kalantari
TEHRAN (Reuters) - A blast in a mosque in Iran that killedat least 12 people was an accident and not an attack, a seniorofficial said on Sunday, but others cautioned the investigationinto the cause was continuing.
Iranian media had reported that a bomb exploded in acrowded mosque in the southern city of Shiraz on Saturdayevening. About 200 people were wounded and some were in acritical condition.
State television carried footage showing wooden debris andpieces of brick strewn on the mosque's carpet-covered floor andambulances and fire engines rushing to the scene.
"Last night's explosion in Shiraz was as a consequence ofan accident and not the planting of a bomb," the official IRNAnews agency quoted the deputy interior minister in charge ofnational security, Abbas Mohtaj, as saying.
He did not give details, but state Press TV television saidthe blast may have been "caused by explosives left behind froman earlier exhibition commemorating" the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war.
The semi-official Fars News Agency carried a similarreport.
"The cause of the incident was probably laxness since adefence fair was held at this place some time ago," it quotedthe commander of security forces in the southern Fars province,Ali Moayedi, as saying.
But Foreign Ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini saidthe investigation was continuing, and "therefore nopre-judgement can be made about the incident".
The deputy head of parliament's national securitycommission, Mohammad-Nabi Roudaki, said the possibility of aterrorist attack had not yet been ruled out.
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 a south-western provincewith a large Sunni Arab population.
Tehran has in the past accused Britain and the UnitedStates of trying to destabilise the Islamic Republic bysupporting ethnic minority rebels operating in sensitive borderareas.
Fars News Agency on Saturday quoted a police official assaying a "hand-made" device had been planted in the mosque.
The governor of Fars province said on Sunday the death tollhad risen to 12 from nine initially reported after the blast.
The explosion took place in the male section of Shiraz'sShohada mosque during an address by a cleric. People in Shiraz,a city of more than one million inhabitants and a populartourist destination, were urged to donate blood for thewounded.
A man carrying a blood-stained shirt said he and otherswere knocked unconscious by the force of the blast: "We went tothe mosque after the evening prayer ... when suddenly there wasthe sound of an explosion and then we did not feel anything."
(Additional reporting by Hossein Jaseb; Editing byCatherine Evans)
