Authorities in the central Iranian holy city of Qom denied that plotters had planned an attack on a mausoleum in the Islamic republic’s clerical capital, at the same time as similar attacks in Iraq. According to the Baztab Internet site, a news service close to senior regime figure Mohsen Rezaie, Iranian intelligence agents had foiled a planned al-Qaeda mortar attack on the Hazrat-e Massumeh shrine on March 2 — the Shiite holy day of Ashura. The website said five rounds were seized near the shrine, an important place of pilrimage which contains the shrine of Fatemeh, sister of the eighth Shiite Imam, Reza. Qom’s deputy governor Karam Hakimi, questioned by AFP, asserted that “no such plot was foiled and no explosive devices were found inside or outside of the mausoleum.” Full Story