Iran nuclear scientist 'killed in bomb attack'
An Iranian nuclear scientist has been killed and another wounded in two separate but similar attacks, according to Iranian media reports.
The scientists were targeted in Tehran by attackers who attached bombs to each of their cars, reports said.The scientist killed has been named as Majid Shahriari of Shahid Beheshti University in Tehran, according to the official Irna news agency.
Another scientist was killed in a bomb blast at the beginning of the year.
The state television website says attackers riding on motorcycles attached bombs to the car windows of the scientists as they were driving to their workplaces on Monday morning.
"In a criminal terrorist act, the agents of the Zionist regime attacked two prominent university professors who were on their way to work," Iran's state television's website reported.
Dr Shahriari was a member of the nuclear engineering department of Shahid Beheshti University.
His wife is said to have been injured in the attack.
The nuclear scientist injured in the second attack was named as Fereydoon Abbasi. His wife was also wounded.
According to the conservative news website Mashreghnews, Dr Abbasi is "one of the few specialists who can separate isotopes" and has been a member of the Revolutionary Guards since the 1979 revolution.
Controversial programme
The Iranian scientist killed in January this year, Masoud Ali Mohammadi, was said to be a nuclear scientist assassinated by counter-revolutionaries, Zionists and agents of the "global arrogance", Iranian media said at the time.
But scientists in the UK and the US said that, from his substantial body of published research, Dr Mohammadi was unlikely to have been working on Iran's nuclear programme, and that his expertise was in another field of physics altogether - quantum mechanics.
There has been much controversy over Iran's nuclear activities.
Tehran says its nuclear programme is for peaceful energy purposes, but the US and other Western nations suspect it of seeking to build nuclear weapons.
On Saturday, Iran said its first atomic power plant in the southern city of Bushehr had begun operations, ahead of a new round of talks with Western powers over the country's nuclear drive.
