Home General Iran says scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh killed with a satellite-controlled gun

Iran says scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh killed with a satellite-controlled gun

Iran says scientist Mohsen Fakhrizadeh killed with a satellite-controlled gun

By: Bloomberg |

December 7, 2020 10:32:12 am






In this picture released by the official website of the office of the Iranian supreme leader, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh sits in a meeting with Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran, Iran, Jan. 23, 2019. Fakhrizadeh, an Iranian scientist that Israel alleged led the Islamic Republic’s military nuclear program until its disbanding in the early 2000s was killed in a targeted attack that saw gunmen use explosives and machine gun fire Friday Nov. 27, 2020, state television said. Two others are unidentified. (Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader via AP)

A satellite-controlled machine gun was used in last week’s assassination of a top Iranian nuclear scientist, Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the semi-official Mehr news agency reported.

Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, who was killed in a gun and car bomb attack on the outskirts of Tehran on Nov. 27, was driving on a highway east of the capital when the weapon “zoomed in” on him “using artificial intelligence,” Mehr said on Sunday, quoting Commodore Ali Fadavi, deputy commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Read More: Iran’s supreme leader vows revenge over slain scientist

Various accounts of his death have emerged since the incident. While early news reports said he was caught in a gunfight between his bodyguards, others said that he was fired at by a remote-controlled machine gun mounted on a pick-up truck operated by someone who later fled the country.

Fadavi said on Sunday that the gun fired a total of 13 shots at Fakhrizadeh and managed to target him with such accuracy that his wife, sitting just inches away from him in the same vehicle, escaped injury. He added that 11 bodyguards in separate cars were also accompanying the couple at the time.

The incident is the second targeted killing of a high-ranking Iranian official since January when outgoing U.S. President Donald Trump ordered a drone strike on General Qassem Soleimani.

Tehran has blamed Israel for Fakhrizadeh’s killing, the fifth assassination of a nuclear scientist on Iranian soil since 2010. Israel hasn’t commented on the allegations, however, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had singled out the scientist in a power-point presentation on Iran’s nuclear program in April 2018.

This article is auto-generated by Algorithm Source: indianexpress.com

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