Location Mashhad, Iran | ||
Date June 20, 1994 (1994-06-20) Organised by People's Mujahedin of Iran Suspect(s) Ramzi Yousef, Abdul Shakoor | ||
A bomb explosion occurred at the shrine of Ali al-Ridha, the eighth Imam of Shia, on 20 June 1994 at 14:26 in a crowded prayer hall. To maximize the amount of the casualties, the explosion day was timed to be coincident with Ashura, one of the holiest days for Shia muslims, when hundreds of pilgrims had gathered to commemorate the death of their third Imam, Husayn ibn Ali.
The attack left at least 25 dead and more than 70 (200, nearly 300 and over 200) injured. The bomb was equivalent to 10 pounds of TNT, according to experts. Strict security measures are applied after this terrorist attack, and visitors are searched before entering the shrine. The event caused further political unrest in Iran.
Suspects
The Iranian government blamed the Iraqi-backed People's Mujahedin of Iran (MEK). According to IRNA, the official Iranian news agency, a caller claimed responsibility for the event in the name of the People's Mujahedeen (MEK). However, MEK condemned the attack. Ramzi Yousef, a member of al-Qaeda, was also accused of performing the terror action. Yousef was supposedly hired by MEK. According to an anonymous US official, Yousef built the bomb and MEK agents placed it in the shrine. According to the analysts, he was suspected of having connections with MEK because of his Iraqi background. In his Terror Tagging however, Tanter accuses a Pakistani militant and not MEK of having connections to Yousef to carry out the bombing. News, A Pakistani daily paper, held Abdul Shakoor, a young religious radical living in Lyari in Karachi who had intimate contacts with Yousef, responsible for the bombing.