World

Violence Rocks Tehran

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

March 13, 2000 / 6:29 AM EST / CBS

Several mortar rounds landed inside a large residential complex in northern Tehran Monday, injuring at least two people, witnesses said.

They said that up to 10 mortars hit the Noor complex, which contains 360 apartments. Blood was seen on the pavement. Ambulances and fire engines were seen rushing to the scene.

The opposition Mujahedeen Khalq claimed responsibility for the attack, saying the mortars had hit a facility of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, Iran's elite military force, which is separate from the regular army.

A Khalq statement said the target was IRGC chief Maj. Gen. Rahim Safavi Witnesses said the missiles missed the IRGC base by about 100 yards.

Eight cars were destroyed in the apartment complex. One person lost a leg and one woman, who was in a car, was slightly injured, said a resident.

Monday's attack followed an assassination bid against a leading reformist reviled by militant hardliners.

Saeed Hajjarian was in intensive care Monday after being shot in the face by unknown assailants in an attack that President Mohammad Khatami condemned as a "sinister" attempt to stop progress in Iran.

Hajjarian was in a coma and under intensive care at Tehran's Sina Hospital where he was rushed after being shot. The gunman escaped on a motorcycle driven by an accomplice.

Hajjarian "is still unconscious and breathing with the help of a respirator," Dr. Mohammadreza Zafarqandi, the surgeon leading the medical team, was quoted today as saying by the official Islamic Republic News Agency.

No one claimed responsibility for the attack, but pro-reform newspapers and Hajjarian's reformist allies blamed hardliners.

Hajjarian had angered many hardliners during the campaign for the Feb. 18 elections with what they considered provocative statements. The elections saw the hard-liners losing control of the parliament for the first time since the 1979 Islamic revolution brought the Shiite clergy to power.

Hajjarian is a key architect of Khatami's reformist movement. In a public speech Sunday in the central city of Meybod, Khatami described the attack as an act of revenge "by desperate people who know they have lost the battle against progress."

"Assassination is the sinister method used by those who have lost any hope of being able to stop this nation's future-oriented move," he said.

Conservative clergymen have been losing influence since Khatami took office in 1997 and began loosening the strict Islamic rules under a campaign of political, social and cultural reforms.

But Khatami and his allies have faced stiff opposition from the hard-liners, many of whom have warned that they would not take last month's electoral defeat lying down. They have portrayed their struggle against the reformists as a fight between good and evil.

Since 1997, vigilantes believed to be allied with hard-liners have attacked several leading reformists. Many others have said they receiveanonymous death threats.

Public anger against the hard-liners mounted after it became known that "rogue" Intelligence Ministry agents had killed five dissidents in late 1998. Although Khatami subsequently appointed a new intelligence minister and overhauled the ministry, officials say it has been impossible to uncover all of the secretive ministry's activities.

Hajjarian, director general of the Sobh-e-Emrouz daily and a member of the Tehran municipal council, had been seeking answers about those killings and other secret Intelligence Ministry activities.

Hajjarian, a former deputy intelligence minister, had alleged that a secretive clique inside the ministry was responsible for assassinations of opponents.

Witnesses said two men on a motorcycle, wearing helmets, approached Hajjarian outside the municipal council offices in central Tehran. One got off the motorcycle, aimed a handgun at Hajjarian and fired two shots from less than three feet away, one witness said. Only one bullet hit Hajjarian in the face, then lodged at the back of his neck.

The attackers rode a motorbike that only security forces and police can use. Civilians are restricted to a motorbike with a much smaller engine capacity.

The Supreme National Security Council convened an emergency session Sunday and decided that the Interior Ministry should "pursue this incident to make all possible efforts to identify the attackers," Hassan Rowhani, secretary of the SNSC, told Tehran radio Monday. The Interior Ministry is in charge of the country's police.