The death toll from the stabbing incident at the Imam Reza Shrine in Iran’s northeastern city of Mashhad has reached two after another cleric succumbed to his wounds at a local hospital on Thursday.
Identified as Daraei, the young victim was undergoing treatment in the intensive care unit of a local hospital, according to reports.
He was one of the three clerics fatally attacked by a 21-year old assailant at the country’s most revered shrine on Tuesday. They had been volunteering for the shrine in the holy month of Ramadan.
One of them, Mohammad Aslani, succumbed to his wounds instantly after being hit multiple times by the assailant, who reportedly has a foreign nationality.
A report in Tasnim News Agency on Thursday said the second victim had undergone difficult surgery to help him recuperate from multiple stabbing wounds inflicted by the assailant.
Daraei passed away hours after thousands of people gathered in the main courtyard of the Razavi shrine to bid adieu to Aslani, who was laid to rest inside the shrine complex, as per his family’s request.
The three clerics, one of them still battling for his life, were associates who had for years been actively involved in voluntary social and cultural activities in Mashhad, the second-most populous city in Iran.
They had also been working in poor neighborhoods on the outskirts of Mashhad to help people living there improve their living standards and also to provide them religious guidance.
The assailant, identified in local media as Abdol Latif Moradi, a 21-year-old Afghan who illegally entered Iran from Pakistan last year, was immediately taken into police custody.
Videos circulating on social media showed that he was under the influence of Takfiri ideology and the Daesh terrorist group.
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