A bomb explosion in a mosque in southern Iran on Saturday killed several people, state television reported.
An initial television report said scores had been killed in the bombing in the city of Shiraz, about 900km south of the capital, Tehran. But it later revised its death toll to several and said an unspecified number of people were also injured.
The semi-official Fars news agency said eight people were killed and more than 66 injured. Fars said the death toll was expected to rise because some of the injured were in a critical condition.
The official Irna news agency said several people were injured but added that no official reports were yet available on deaths. There was no immediate explanation for the discrepancies in the reports.
No one claimed responsibility for the explosion and local official Mohammad Reza Hadaegh told state television the cause of the blast was under investigation.
Fars said the force of the explosion shook houses more than a kilometre from the site of the bombing, and ambulances and firefighters were rushing to the mosque. It said the mosque is the site of weekly speech about extremist Wahabi beliefs and the outlawed Baha’i faith.
Wahabism is an austere brand of Sunni Islam practised mostly in Saudi Arabia. The fundamentalist Wahabi strain of Islam considers Shi’ites heretics and Iran is dominated by Shi’ite Muslims.
Wahabis are suspected of having influence over some militants waging the insurgency in Iraq.
The Baha’i faith was founded in the 1860s by a Persian nobleman, Baha’u’llah, who claimed to be a new prophet in the series that included Moses, Jesus and Muhammad. Islam considers Muhammad to be the last of the prophets.
Iran had been the cradle of the Baha’i faith in the middle of the 19th century. After the 1979 Islamic revolution, the faith was banned and it is not recognised in the Iranian Constitution as a religious minority.
Last year, Baha’i communities abroad reported that a group of followers were detained in Shiraz while helping poor communities there. — Sapa-AP