Thaindian News

Tehran, Jan 11 (IANS) Iran blamed Israel Wednesday for assassinating an Iranian nuclear official earlier in the morning in a car bomb attack in Tehran, Xinhua reported.

Media reports gave varying descriptions about the killed person. Some identified Mostafa Ahmadi-Roshan as a university professor but the Fars news agency and local Press TV reported he was a “nuclear scientist”.

Iranian news agency IRNA later quoted Tehran’s Sharif University as saying that Ahmadi-Roshan, 32, was actually a staff of Iran’s Natanz nuclear enrichment site.

Iran’s First Vice President Mohammad-Reza Rahimi said Israeli agents were the perpetrators behind Wednesday’s assassination.

“The enemies should know that they will not be able to stop Iran’s scientific progress by such terrorist acts,” Rahimi was quoted as saying by IRNA.

The victim was the deputy chief of the commercial section of Iran’s Natanz nuclear enrichment site. He graduated from Tehran’s distinguished Sharif University in 2003, majoring in chemistry engineering.

Wednesday’s blast took place at a faculty of Iran’s Allameh Tabatai University near Gol Nabi Street. Two others were also injured in the blast, which took place in the north of the capital, BBC reported.

The attack followed a pattern that killed nuclear scientists in the country in the past.

Last July, nuclear physicist Daryoush Rezaie was killed in an attack in front of his Tehran house by assailants riding a motorbike.

In November 2010, Majid Shahriari, a member of the nuclear engineering faculty at Shahid Beheshti University, was killed in a Tehran blast. The bomb was attached to his car.

In January 2010, Massoud Ali Mohammadi, a physics professor, died when a motorcycle fitted with explosives exploded near his car.