TEHRAN (AFP) — Iran protested to the United States on Wednesday over what it said was a US-based counter-revolutionary group responsible for a deadly mosque bombing.
The protest was lodged through the Swiss embassy, which looks after US interests in Iran in the absence of diplomatic ties.
"The Swiss charge d'affaires was summoned to the foreign ministry in the absence of its ambassador and he was informed of Iran's strong protest against free activities of a terrorist counter-revolutionary group in the US," the ISNA news agency reported.
"According to undeniable and strong evidence and documents, a terrorist network that was involved in the Shiraz mosque blast is supported and directed by an anti-revolutionary group inside the US," ISNA said, quoting a foreign ministry director for the Americas.
"Acting from inside America, this counter-revolutionary group used the media and the Internet to recruit the terrorists, finance, train and send them to Iran, and it has claimed responsibility for the blast," it said.
It added that the network intended to carry out "other terrorist acts in the country.
"The foreign ministry director insisted that the US government is responsible for the killing of our innocent people and all the terrorist acts of this group," ISNA said.
It added that part of the evidence and documents about the group's activities were handed to the Swiss diplomat to be submitted to American officials.
Iran has already arrested 15 people and accused the United States and Britain of training and financing those behind the April 12 bombing which killed 13 people and wounded more than 200 in a mosque in the southern city of Shiraz.
Iran has in the past blamed US and British agents based in neighbouring Iraq and Afghanistan for launching attacks on border provinces with significant ethnic minority populations.
But the strike in Shiraz was the first in decades in Iran's Persian heartland. The normally placid city is not in a border zone, nor is it home to any significant ethnic or religious minority population.
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