TEHRAN: Iran was to hold a memorial service Wednesday for a Shia cleric stabbed to death a day earlier by a suspected Sunni extremist in the revered Imam Reza shrine in the northeastern city of Mashhad.

The chief suspect in the bloody attack was named as Abdolatif Moradi, 21, an ethnic Uzbek who had entered Iran illegally via the Pakistani border a year ago, the Tasnim news agency reported.

Moradi had “worked in transport” in a poor city district and had been active on social media using pseudonyms including Abdolatif al-Salafi to “spread takfiri ideology and confront Shias”.