BICOM

A magnetic bomb attached to a car by a motorcyclist exploded at a university in Tehran today, killing a scientist and injuring two other people, according to Iranian news agency reports.

“This morning a motorbiker attached a bomb to a Peugeot 405, which exploded,” the deputy governor of Tehran province, Safar Ali Bratloo, was quoted as saying by the ILNA news agency.

Several Iranian media outlets identified the person killed as Mostafa Ahmadi Roshan, a scientist and lecturer at the university, who was in the car with two passengers. Ahmadi-Roshan, 32, was a graduate of the Sharif University of Technology in Iran and supervised a department at Natanz uranium enrichment facility in Isfahan province, according to a Fars report.

Three other Iranian scientists were killed in 2010 and 2011 when their cars blew up in similar circumstances. At least two of the scientists had been working on Iran’s nuclear programme.

Fars reports that the bombing method appears similar to another 2010 attack that injured former university professor Fereydun Abbasi-Davani, now the head of the country’s atomic energy organisation.  

The United States and other countries say Iran is attempting to develop nuclear weapons. Iran

denies the allegation, saying that its nuclear programme is intended for peaceful purposes.